First-Year Writing Seminar Program Writing Exercises
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Most materials in the Writing Exercises collection have won the Knight Award for Writing Exercises, an award recognizing excellence in short exercises and/or handouts designed to improve student writing and for use in First-Year Writing Seminars. Award winners address topics from a wide range of writing issues such as development of theses, use of primary sources, organization of evidence, awareness of audience, and attention to sentence patterns. Exercises and handouts may be for in and/or out of class use. Materials include a rationale for future instructors.
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Item Showing and Telling: The Ethnographer's Trade SecretsHorner, Rachel (2022)This worksheet introduces students to the distinctions between active and passive descriptions, which I describe here as ‘showing’ and ‘telling’ respectively, to demonstrate how writing from observation-based details, rather than conclusions drawn from these details, often makes for more engaging and effective writing. Although the worksheet centers ethnography and thus might be best suited for instructors and students in the social sciences, it can easily be tailored to teach descriptive writing in any discipline.Item Curating an ExhibitJao, Charline (2022)In this activity, the metaphor of a museum exhibit allows students to think more critically about how they incorporate sources into an argument. Rather than simply talking about texts on the surface-level, this exercise encourages them to explore more nuanced critical maneuvers and to think about texts in conversation. By showing students how their choice of texts allows them to expand, criticize, or refine ideas (rather than just stating them), “Curating an Exhibit” encourages a deeper engagement with primary sources and provides practice for thesiswriting.Item Handout: Undertaking synthesis in your literature reviewRobinson, Ewan (2021)Alongside this handout, students worked in groups to analyze two example literature reviews that modeled different structures for conducting synthesis at the paragraph and sentence levels. Students created reverse outlines of the model texts and identified specific writing features (transitions, pointing words, comparison words, etc.) used by the authors to narrate the relationship among their sources (i.e. to accomplish the goal of synthesis). The handout below and the model texts served as references for students as they revised their preparatory writing into draft body paragraphs during the following week. Students reported that having a clear explanation and demonstrations of synthesis helped them to make specific recommendations to one another during subsequent peer review.Item Using Examples to Illustrate ConceptsSouthgate, Libby (2021)This writing exercise helps students develop the ability to develop and deploy examples to illustrate concepts or ideas. The exercise is in three parts. In the first, the whole class reads and then discusses examples of writing where an author has used an example to illustrate a concept/idea (passages taken from texts used in class). In the second, the students work in groups to develop their own example, which is then work-shopped as a whole class. Lastly, the students write their example out in prose. This exercise was completed on zoom using interactive google slides in lieu of a physical worksheet, but it would work just as well as a physical worksheet.Item Anticipating Counterarguments to Deepen ComprehensionEstrella, Ariel (2021)Students strengthen their argumentative skills by answering the same prompt from two different perspectives. Students are then provided questions for a guided reflection on the process. This activity promotes a deeper reading comprehension by arguing for both sides of a dialectic. In doing so, students unveil a text’s contradictions, wordplay, and ambiguities. This assignment can be used to develop a habit of expecting counterarguments and/or to generate an in-class discussion about craft.Item Reverse Outlining a Published ArticlePost, Ryan (2018)With the goal of improving the organization of students' writing, this exercise asks students to create a reverse outline of the introductory section of a published article. For each paragraph, students must a) give the paragraph a "title" conveying its main point; b) in bullet points, summarize key information the paragraph describes; and c) determine what purpose this paragraph serves for the piece as a whole. For homework, students write a reverse outline of their essay.Item Sentence Structure VariationArmstrong, Kacie (2018)This exercise was designed to help students understand the importance of sentence structure variation. A model passage was used to dissect and evaluate sentence structure variety, and then students practiced this skill in their own writing. Ultimately, students learned to vary sentence structure in order to achieve the quick pacing and rhythmic structure that is characteristic of editorial writing.Item Writing to ReadGunhan, Aslihan (2019)This assignment is tailored to function as a "Writing to Read" exercise that was conducted in the classroom. By giving the students short prompts, I asked them to consider themselves in different positions (like a journal editor, an author in the same field, a writing tutor) and give feedback to one specific essay which they collectively found unsuccessful.Item Voice, Genre, Style, Diction, Tone: A Musical Guide to Writing StyleTyson, Lee (2020)This handout explains and clarifies the distinctions among aspects of writing style (voice, genre, style, diction, and tone) through parallel concepts in music. While particularly useful in a writing course on musical topics, this handout offers an accessible introduction to writing style concepts for students who are attuned to music in their daily lives, as listeners or performers. An accompanying writing style analysis peer review activity is included.Item Mapping a CityMoynihan, Michael (2020)This in-class activity is designed to teach mapping as a tool to develop a research question. It also incorporates a spatial element into the brainstorming process in order to make connections between concepts and terms that could otherwise seem separate or disparate. After the activity, the students will take part in a short writing exercise to begin forming conclusions about the connections and relationships they made.