This work presents the results obtained from research conducted by Instituto Tecnológico Metropolitano (ITM) and Institución Universitaria de Envigado in Colombia to determine and describe the reading and writing proficiency levels of students at enrollment in different undergraduate programs at ITM. For this purpose, an academic intervention based on text linguistics and critical reading was conducted with an experimental group. Besides, the control group was composed of randomly selected students from four different Spanish courses. The participants in both groups took tests before and after the intervention to establish their levels of literacy at those moments. The results of the experimental group were better than the control in terms of cohesion, coherence, critical reading and text structure. This demonstrates, not only conceptual, but also practical appropriation of text linguistics. However, the results of evaluative and sociocultural aspects of critical reading still need to be improved.