SUMMARY
The paper analyses how academic literacy is promoted in academic writing assignments using genres. The context of the study is that of undergraduate disciplines in the field of Biological Sciences. The disciplines take place in an American institution and in a Brazilian federal one. The data were drawn from pedagogical and evaluative documents that were analysed by content analysis. The data collected from the American institution showed that genres are used as a vehicle to integrate knowledge, and also todemonstrate information. Relating to national context, genres are used to demonstrate information. It can be concluded that, in the American institution, academic literacy occurs in an ideological way in the disciplines, since writing is developed making use of genres that are explored as a social practice. Nevertheless, in the Brazilian institution, academic literacy is developed in an autonomous way, due to the absence of the teaching of writing in the disciplines, probably because it is considered thatstudents already know how to write. In brief, this investigation intends to clarify academic literacy practices in different academic contexts in order to bring insight to other researchers and practitioners on how this issue has been dealt with, and what are the strengths and the weaknesses of such practices.