The application of schematic pre-reading materials on incidental vocabulary learning has not been explored. The study investigates the effects of schematic pre-reading materials on EFL college students’ incidental professional vocabulary acquisition. 46 students from a college of management served as participants. Pre-reading materials were integrated in one-month professional reading activity. A pretest was adopted to ensure participants lacked familiarity with target vocabulary. After each mode session, all participants took an immediate posttest and a 3-week-delayed posttest. Following the final posttest, the participants completed a questionnaire. The findings revealed that in the immediate posttest, participants in the schema-based mode retained the most target words in the three modes although there was no significant difference between schema-based mode and word list mode. In the delayed posttest, participants in the schema-based mode have the highest target word retention in recognition posttests and word list mode outperformed the other two modes in production posttests. Furthermore, all of the students had positive attitude towards schema-based mode. The mode was the most helpful for the students to incidentally learn business vocabulary. Pedagogical implications regarding use of content schemata as pre-reading materials for incidental business vocabulary learning are discussed.