The purpose of this course is to enable students to acquire skills in academic literacy which will serve them throughout their university careers, transferable skills which they can take with them beyond university, and a set of tools for understanding writing which will enable life-long learning of this vital skill. Inculcating these skills is done by means of a set of activities targetting areas such as critical reading, awareness of the characteristics of successful disciplinary texts, and writing subskills, such as supporting an argument effectively with evidence. Activities to foster relevant skills take place outside and inside the classroom, and students work independently and in groups to produce important genres, and assessment of their attainment of the learning objectives is based primarily on their written output.