Abstract: Through a critical review of the English academic writing research over the past 50 years, this article indicated that studies on English academic writing have witnessed a gradual paradigm shift from focus on the language skills to the linguistic community socialization, and the integration of language and disciplinary subject matter in recent years. Consequently, in academic writing research field writers' personal literacy practices and social culture context have gained more attention, which resulted in the emergence of “Academic Literacies” paradigm. Then, this article reviews the current trend of academic literacies paradigm on its background, rationale and pedagogy. Based on the discussion of academic literacies, this article proposes the principles on the application of such paradigm in academic writing. Then the article provides an example on its application in writing practice. This article points out that academic literacies paradigm promotes the integration of language skills with disciplinary content knowledge, which has important implications on the academic writing course design at the tertiary level in China.