This chapter reports the results of two projects which were conducted during the last years at the Linguistics department of Vienna University and which aimed (a) at establishing an empirical basis for the development of writing courses for humanities students and (b) at developing and testing a prototype of such a course in a blended learning framework. In the first study, Austrian university students' writing practices in three social science disciplines (social history, business studies, and business psychology) were investigated. In the second project, an academic writing course for students which was based on the results of the previous project was developed in a blended learning framework. The two discipline specific courses elaborate the language-related aspects of the general module and comprise the following broad areas: 'Structuring a paper', 'Perspective', 'Explanation and argumentation' and 'the thematic thread'.  Keywords: business psychology, empirical projects, linguistics department, social history, Vienna University