This course aims to develop advanced skills in critical analysis, close reading and composition through lectures, discussion and group activities in which students analyse and evaluate materials from the discipline of ELT. Readings might come from professional journals, reports, newspapers, magazines and literature which enable them to develop and increase vocabulary in an academic context. Therefore, students will be able to comprehend contrasting viewpoints and to predict and identify main ideas and to decode inter-sentential clues. It also aims to equip students with intensive and extensive reading habits which will then foster their reading and writing speeds. In addition, this course aims to teach academic writing to students who need to present and defend their own points of view clearly and persuasively. Students will learn to recognize and emulate the many strategies, structures, vocabulary, and styles appropriate to formal writing, and they practice the process method by producing several increasingly refined drafts of academic papers where topics range from general skills to specific writing formats and guides for non-native English speakers. Students also work to master the norms for citing and attributing data from print and other sources, and to observe the methods of acknowledging the research findings of others, specifically in APA style.

Critical thinking skills such as synthesizing information or analyzing a problem as well as reacting on the basis of evaluation are fostered. Such sub-skills of reading are employed by the students in their writing assignments. Students also analyze and produce different types of writings, build up writing skills emphasizing the organization, coherence, and cohesion and such sub-skills as summarizing, outlining, quoting, paraphrasing, and summarizing. The use of spelling and punctuation conventions as well as non-alphabetic symbol use will be practiced as well