What's the best way to learn academic writing?

Many colleges offer classes in academic writing, either pre-sessional or in-sessional. These usually teach topics such as the stages of essay-writing (note-making, planning etc) and may practise skills such as paraphrasing. Depending on how much writing in English you have done before, these should be useful, but students should remember two points:

1) Different disciplines often have different writing requirements. Students of Business may need to learn different formats to students of Sociology. Differences may include the  reference system. So the most useful classes are subject specific e.g. just for lawyers or engineers.

2) Even if your speaking and listening skills are good (i.e. IELTS 6.0 or above) learning to write effectively can take a long time. Your writing teacher can give you useful feedback, but you should also expect to work by yourself and learn to criticise your own writing.