Academic skills are of essential importance for all university students. However, these skills are never easy, especially when they are taught in English to non-native speakers. For the effective practice of these skills at university, English-majored students need to not only master the general language skills but also use the academic skills to the accepted standard issued by the institution. Among the academic skills, active and critical reading skills are frequently exploited (Tomitch, 2000; Grabe, 1997). Practising these critical reading skills requires a lot of effort from both teachers and students. In addition, writing academic essays that require documented sources is also overwhelming for a number of students. This presentation aims to (1) clarify how academic skills are practiced through a reading-writing assignment in a proficiency course for non-native English-majored university students; (2) identify challenges facing both teachers and students in this reading-writing assignment, and (3) propose some recommendations for a more effective teaching method and learning practice. Keywords: academic skills; documented sources References Tomitch, L. M. 2000. Designing reading tasks to foster critical thinking. Ilha do Desterro 38:83–90. Grabe, B. 1997. Discourse analysis and reading instruction. In Functional approaches to written text: Classroom applications, ed. T. Miller, 2–15. Washington, DC: United States Information Agency. Krashen, S. D. 1981. Second language acquisition and second language learning. Oxford: Pergamon. Larimer, R. E., and L. Schleicher, eds. 1999. New ways in using authentic materials in the classroom. Alexandria, VA: TESOL