In this course we will explore different aspects of the academic language in university settings through substantial reading, writing, and analytical and research work. Students are expected to do selected readings from academic publications on several topics related to academic writing, and complete writing and analytical tasks in and outside the classroom. We look into concepts which have been used to understand the nature of good writing, and apply them to students’ own writing samples as well as gold-standard academic discourse in order to help students improve their writing. The goal is not only to enable students to acquire the essentials of the skills and styles of academic writing, thereby preparing them for future writing assignments, but also to contextualize students in academic writing as a field of study. Topics to be discussed include argumentation, paraphrasing, plagiarism, cohesiveness and metadiscourse, among others.