This booklet describes the ideas underpinning a learning to learn course, a course that teaches students what they need to learn to read and write in tertiary academic settings in Australia. An introduction explains how this approach to academic discourse draws on other approaches and also differs from them. Section 1 describes some forces shaping the new culture (academic discourse) that students are entering. Section 2 sketches a history of academic life to identify some key (competing) elements that make up academic discourse. It suggests that all these historical traces remain present in academic discourse and need to be taken into account in constructing a course intended to bridge students into academic discourse. Section 3 describes contemporary debates about academic discourse and, linked to this, how to introduce students to academic discourse. Section 4 shows how different approaches to the teaching of reading are associated with different educational goals. It describes how educators draw on these different approaches to the teaching of academic reading in the course and provide reasons for the way educators sequence reading activities in the course. Section 5 describes some writing activities students are introduced to in the course and positions the course's approach vis-a-vis other contemporary approaches to the teaching of writing. Section 6 provides a nine point summary of key ideas of the approach. (Contains a 64-item bibliography.) (YLB)