ABSTRACT
This chapter introduces Critical Language Awareness (CLA) into Study Skills programme at a British University and the dilemmas that both teachers and students can face when dealing with the dominant discourse conventions in the academic community: to conform or not to conform. It focuses on the teaching of academic writing to university students and in particular on work with students from the Department of Politics and International Relations. Chase, Director of the Western College Program Writing Center at Miami University, Ohio registers a new emphasis in the teaching of writing and composition skills. The notion of an academic discourse community implies that there is a set of shared values and beliefs, of discoursal conventions. The first principle is that CLA should focus on all of the three layers of discourse and on how they are interrelated. Language forms cannot be considered independently of the way in which they are used to communicate in a particular context.
