These 6-hour courses develop students' academic reading skills, build vocabulary, and practice various forms of writing. 

At the lower levels (0–2), students read stories and non-fiction to understand events and ideas. They write short, basic responses, and they focus mostly on frequently used vocabulary and General Service List (GSL) words. 

The upper levels (3–6) read level-appropriate academic or journalistic articles to improve reading skills and to employ bottom-up reading strategies to make sense of texts. Students respond to texts through summary writing and synthesize information from multiple sources. They practice academic paragraph and essay writing. Vocabulary in these levels comes from the Academic Word List (AWL) sub-lists.