This course aims to increase students' ability to develop ideas, to express ideas effectively, and to engage different academic literacies. Students will develop increased fluency in reading and writing in academic contexts. The course will create opportunities for students to become active participants in their own learning through methods designed to enhance students' abilities to both read and write more effectively, critically, and strategically. It gives special attention to expository and persuasive writing. Critical reading of articles, speeches, and other non-literary texts helps students to understand the rhetorical process, to analyze an audience and its cultural contexts and to foresee the audience's response.