Teaching with Models of Writing

Working with models of writing can increase students’ awareness of the ways experts and practitioners organize and present knowledge in their fields and disciplines. This page offers guidelines for selecting, annotating, and using models of writing in your class. Along with providing students with exemplars or “mentor texts,” samples of ineffective or problematic writing can also be used as constructive teaching tools.

Selecting and Annotating Strong Models

Because of their familiarity with the genres of writing they assign (lab reports, technical memos, ethnographies, primary source analysis essays, philosophical arguments, etc.), instructors are in a powerful position to assist students with acquiring rhetorical and cognitive knowledge important to their field. One way to support students is to provide them with examples of writing that demonstrate the specific features that are valued in the discipline, profession, field of study, or a relative skill level for a course. A variety of texts can be annotated and shared as models of effective writing strategies and practices:

  • Assigned course readings
  • Excerpts from professional or academic journals or presentations
  • Complete or partial samples of student writing (with identifying details redacted) from previous semesters
  • Samples developed by the instructor

Annotating a sample text entails labeling its key rhetorical and cognitive features. In effect, an annotated sample takes what is often tacit or implicit for experts and makes it more explicit for novices. As David Perkins (2010) explains, annotations can help to “uncover the hidden game” involved in learning. Here are three examples of annotated models.

Sample 1: Annotated Slides

MIT provides examples of annotated slides through its OpenCourseWare Collection. The slides provide detailed descriptions of each slide's visual content to help students better understand and follow along with the lecture material.

Sample 2: A Case Study Assignment

In this example, developed as a guide for instructors seeking to design assignments, the annotations include marginal comments along with an end comment that calls attention to broader objectives.

Sample 3: Student-Generated Annotation

As discussed below, involving students in the annotation of documents can be an effective active learning activity. In this sample, a group of students have annotated a paragraph from a profile essay on the tennis player, Roger Federer, written by David Foster Wallace. The students’ annotation calls attention to key stylistic features. This annotation activity was done prior to the students drafting their own profile essays.

Annotating Models: A Few Suggestions

Students in a design class working with fabric and apparel on body forms.

Annotation can happen verbally and/or in writing. The simplest and perhaps most common form of annotation involves verbal commenting in class. With spoken annotations, instructors and students talk through a sample of writing, observing notable features. Sometimes referred to as meta-teaching, this oral annotation can be done quickly and requires little time to prepare. Verbal annotation can be easily and routinely integrated into classes in brief ways, with instructors highlighting rhetorical features during regular discussions of the content of assigned texts. In-class oral annotation provides ready opportunities for students to ask follow-up questions and respond in the moment to instructors’ comments.

Written annotations take longer to prepare, but offer the distinct benefit of durability. Students can revisit and study written annotations at their own pace, and annotated documents can be used across terms and courses. With tools like Google Docs commenting or Feedback Fruits Interactive Study Materials, students and faculty can also collaborate on annotations in writing. Written annotation is therefore a strong complement or even alternative to more traditional verbal annotation practices.

Step 1: Collect models of the form, mode, or genre of writing. Your course reading list can serve as an initial site for collection. With student consent, instructors can also collect samples of student writing and share them with future classes, so long as identifying information is redacted. In addition, the Writing Across the Curriculum program has amassed a large archive of redacted samples of student writing from across the undergraduate curriculum. We're happy to connect instructors with samples.

Step 2: Provide “big picture” framing by identifying the context—the scene and situation—for the model. The following questions, adapted from Scenes of Writing: Strategies for Composing with Genres (Devitt, Reiff, & Bawarshi, 2004), are useful to consider when preparing annotations.

  • Setting: Where does the genre appear? With what other genres does this genre interact?
  • Subject: What topics, issues, ideas, questions, etc. does the genre address?
  • Purposes: Why do writers write this genre, and why do readers read it? What purposes does the genre fulfill for people who use it?

Step 3: Get into the details by identifying and describing typical patterns in the genre that are exemplified by the model. Consider these questions, also drawn from Scenes of Writing, when preparing annotations:

  • What recurrent features does the sample share with others of its kind?
  • What content is typically included in the genre, as illustrated by this sample? What content is excluded?
  • What counts as evidence (e.g., personal testimony, quantitative data, textual analysis, etc.)? How does the text use rhetorical appeals, such as logos (logic), pathos (feeling), and ethos (authority)?
  • How are texts in the genre structured? What are their parts (e.g., Introduction, Methods, Results, and Discussion), and how are they organized?
  • What layout or appearance is common?
  • How long is a standard text in this genre? What types of sentences do texts in this genre typically use? How long are they? Are they simple or complex? Passive or active?
  • What diction (types of words) is most prevalent? Is a kind of jargon or specialized language used?
  • In light of GenAI, you could also add this additional question: How does an expert human model of this genre differ from an AI-generated model? 

Step 4: Provide brief, targeted annotations that note specific features. A strong annotation will identify a concrete writing move (Graff & Birkenstein, 2018) or thinking pattern you would like your students to emulate.

Step 5: Align annotations with grading criteria. When the language in the annotation mirrors the language in a grading rubric, students are better able to see the relevance and importance of the annotation to work in the class.

Using Models in the Classroom

Students wearing 3D glasses looking at maps in geography class.

Annotated models are often provided as supplemental resources posted on Canvas. However, they can also be integrated into active learning activities to teach writing. One effective strategy is to have students, working in small groups, develop annotations for models they have selected or that the instructor has provided. This constructivist approach can be especially useful in capstone-level courses where students have some familiarity with genres or in courses where the writing genres involve multimodal forms. After students have prepared annotations, the class can then determine what the most effective features are and use those features to guide future writing and features of assessment.

Using GenAI-Generated Models

Research has long shown that a strong, authentic sample, produced by a practitioner in their field, discipline, or practice, is ideal for modeling effective writing. Recent research has also documented the potential efficacy of using GenAI-developed models to support genre-based teaching, especially with second language learners. Likewise, some instructors have found useful and innovative ways to integrate AI-developed models into their teaching. For example, a professor of neuroscience uses GenAI-created literature reviews to expose typical structural and analytical weaknesses, such as inadequate synthesis or a failure to pinpoint a research gap. Prior to writing their own drafts, students critically annotate and discuss the AI-generated samples to identify and learn from these typical flaws. This practice also primes students to provide more effective peer response at a later stage.

For the foreseeable future, experimenting with the use of human-generated and AI-generated models will allow instructors to tailor their teaching to fit their students’ needs. The WAC Program is available to consult with instructors at the University of Minnesota on the development and use of models.

A Caveat

Providing and discussing models can help emerging writers access some of the conventions and features of genres that have developed and continue to evolve within disciplines and fields. In this respect, a model is not a fixed form, nor is it a template to be filled out. As Charles Bazerman (2018) points out, “excessively authoritative models can put high walls around school writing, making it harder for nascent writers to reach out to other meaningful writing experiences.” Bazerman’s caution is especially relevant in light of GenAI, which can generate highly formulaic templates. Instructors should caution students that while GenAI can quickly provide a structural model, relying too heavily on it can also impede the development of their own authentic, disciplinary voices. Ideally, models will help students to analyze patterns that have emerged in disciplinary and field-specific ways, while at the same time encouraging them to adapt those patterns in new ways.