First-year English is simply part of that continuum, adding to reading and writing skills already demonstrated in Grade 12. Continuing the study of English as a subject in first year has the educational objective of improving the students' awareness of and sensitivity to language and its powers, especially in written forms. The performance outcomes include enhanced skills in reading, writing, critical thinking, and to some extent in speaking and listening. Most other courses contribute in some way to one or more of these outcomes. Enhancement of critical thinking skills, for instance, is a normal outcome of any post-secondary academic course.
Most disciplines also expect students to read and write extensively.
But that is the difference. English is the only discipline, along with closely related fields like Creative Writing, that provides direct instruction in reading and writing for their own sake as its primary educational purpose. Students encounter imaginative, argumentative, and informative literature. They learn to identify organizational strategies such as comparison and contrast, coordination and subordination, cause and effect, description and narration. They come to realize the significance of imagistic and thematic patterns, and to see the linkages between ideas, attitudes, emotions, events, and characters.