Calls to embed academic literacy support are well-documented due to the discipline-specific nature of the texts, discourses and ‘ways of knowing’ what students need to master. This paper evaluates an undergraduate linguistics course that has been designed to embed academic literacy support into a course without sacrificing discipline content. The discipline content is supplemented with additional activities that support listening and reading, an ‘exploring ideas’ strand to develop research skills, a scaffolded series of linked written assignments and online grammar quizzes, all of which focus on the same weekly content. A previous phase of the study showed a correlation between end-of-course grades and the extent to which students completed the activities designed to support their academic literacy development. However, it has not previously been possible to demonstrate exactly which skills and competencies are achieved at which point of the course or the extent to which the same skills and competencies are demonstrated at higher levels of the same programme. In this phase of evaluation, a rubric of ‘can-do’ statements is used to show how complex academic practices can be broken down into mini learning outcomes, achievement of which can be evaluated at different points in time.