This webinar offers a critically reflective account of an introductory academic writing course for a diverse foundation-level UK university cohort, including multilingual, refugee-background and mature learners. Despite their different trajectories, a shared tension is that their day-to-day language practices can be framed as in need of remediation to conform to academic communication norms underpinned by exclusionary language ideologies rooted in anglocentrism, monolingualism, white normativity, ableism and classism.

Drawing on critical EAP (Benesch, 2001), anti-deficit (García et al., 2021) and raciolinguistic perspectives (Flores & Rosa, 2015), the course pursued the dual aim of building students’ confidence in academic writing whilst examining how dominant academic language norms can reproduce linguistic hierarchies.

This interactive webinar shares examples of teaching materials and reflections on how students engaged with this critical approach. Participants are invited to discuss possibilities and challenges for critical, anti-deficit and anti-racist approaches to academic literacies in their own institutional contexts.