Developing Students as Writers:
Strategies for Structuring Writing Assignments Across a Semester
There is a big difference between assigning a paper and helping students to become better writers.
Unfortunately, the experience of writing something, by itself, does not necessarily help students to
improve. For students to develop as writers, they need typically assignments that slow down the writing
process and break it into discrete steps. Such structured assignments provide ample opportunities for
feedback, reflection and re-writing, which are the keys to learning. The following in a list of some ways
you could structure a writing assignment to ensure that students can learn from it.
Option #1: “Do the whole thing; now do the whole thing again”
1. The assignment is introduced at the beginning of the semester
2. Students submit a complete (but not final) draft of the assignment some time later. They
receive feedback from the instructor on their draft.
3. Students revise their draft based on the instructor’s comments, and they then submit a revised
final draft.
Pros:
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Excellent opportunity to give students substantial feedback on argument and organization.
Mimics the processes that many professional academic writers typically use.
Students may have a more substantial experience with revising.
Relatively few deadlines to manage
Cons:
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Possibly less effective with less-advanced students (ie. if they are not ready to produce a
good first draft on their own.)
Can be challenging to motivate students to work hard on both the first draft and the
revision.
Option #2: “Do it piece by piece; then put it all together”
This approach is often used with papers in the sciences and social sciences that have clearly defined
sections, like “Introduction,” “Review of Literature,” “Methods,” “Findings,” etc.
1. The assignment is introduced at the beginning of the semester.
2. Students write a draft of one section of the paper first. They receive feedback on that section of
the paper.
3. Students then write a draft of another section of the paper. They receive feedback on this
section.
4. Etc. until all of the sections are drafted and commented on
5. At the end of the semester, the students submit a final paper, including revised versions of all of
the sections previously submitted.
Pros:
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This allows students to start working early in the semester because they can be drafting
sections of the paper even while the research is ongoing. (eg. writing about methods while
they are doing experiments; writing about findings while they are analyzing data, etc.)
If students are unfamiliar with the typical structure of the paper (what goes in a “findings”
section vs a “discussion” section) this may help them learn that.
Cons:
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Won’t work with some assignments/disciplines
Lots of separate deadlines to manage
Students often don’t work on revising until all of the sections are complete, typically leaving
them with little time for that work.
Option #3: Isolate some specific/discrete skills and practice them separately
1. The assignment is introduced at the beginning of the semester.
2. During the semester, the instructor creates opportunities for students to practice and reflect on
specific/discrete skills that are required in the paper. For example, a paper might require
students to…
 Research government publications and cite them using APA style
 Represent data on a graph
 Give a “close reading” of a literary text
 Create a “References” page
 Summarize a complicated text
 Synthesize a set of texts
3. The instructor chooses one or more skills and creates brief assignments or activities (can be
done in class or out; can be graded or ungraded) that allow students to practice that skill by
itself.
Pros:
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Can be used to put emphasis on the specific skills/abilities that are represented in the
writing-related goals for the course.
Can be shared/coordinated with other instructors in the department (eg. all of the faculty
who teach the “junior seminar” course agree to use a particular exercise that addresses a
skill that everyone agrees is important.
Cons:
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The lessons and activities often require advance planning and preparation time.
Some lessons are may require in-class time
Option #4: A Combination of the Options Above
Here are a few possible ways to do that:
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The students spend the first few weeks of the semester working on discrete skills, and
the rest of the semester following Option #1 or #2.
The students follow Option #1. But after the first draft is submitted and commented on,
the instructor creates opportunities for students to practice and reflect on specific/discrete
skills that are required in the paper.
The students complete Option # 2 up to step four. But rather than collecting the pieces
into a final paper, they collect them into a penultimate draft. That draft receives
feedback, and then they revise for a final draft.