University students are part of the digital native generation who grew up with the internet and social media. They are exposed to media content daily and understanding this media is an important and relevant part of their lives. This talk describes an Integrated Academic Writing CLIL Media Literacy course at a Japanese national university that aimed to both provide students with the critical thinking skills to analyze and interpret media messages and to demonstrate this understanding through the writing of 5-paragraph essays. Students were given pre and post course surveys that focused on their experience and confidence levels with writing an academic essay and their knowledge and understanding of media literacy. Pre-course surveys showed that students had very little experience in writing academic essays in English and that confidence levels in their academic writing ability were relatively low. In addition, they were not familiar with some of the basic principles and concepts of media literacy. After the 15-week course and through a series of scaffolded lessons that taught students academic writing through media literacy content, post-course surveys showed that the majority of students significantly improved in their confidence levels, knowledge and ability in academic writing. This was achieved via step-by-step practice of the IBC format generated from the media literacy themed content through integrated writing activities that brought benefits to the students with respect to both content learning and language learning processes.