Teaching Scientific Writing in a First-Year Chemistry Laboratory

Abstract

The dominant way that chemistry undergraduate
students develop their scientific writing skills is in the
preparation of laboratory reports. We integrated writing
instruction into a first-year chemistry lab course to teach
students how to write substantial, formal lab reports, rather
than the previously required short lab reports, and to prepare
them for upper levels of study in chemistry, where they will be
required to write reports in the style of a scientific publication.
This writing instruction initiative uses teaching assistants as
the major players, and focuses on training these teaching
assistants effectively so that they can provide valuable and
consistent feedback to students.