Ask for structure, not prose

Recommended for: Any course with a writing assignment; best in the week students start planning

Objective: Students can use AI to explore alternative structures without handing over the writing itself, and can say why they chose the structure they did.

Time needed: 25 minutes in class, plus the writing that follows · Group size: Any size, from 10 to 300; individual work with a plenary round-up

Background for the instructor

When a student asks AI for help with writing, the request is almost always "write this for me" or "make this better". Both produce prose, and prose is exactly where the thinking lives. The change here is small and does a lot: ask for the shape, not the text.

Models are good at this. Three structures side by side show that the order of an argument is a choice rather than a law of nature - something students rarely discover, because they usually take the first shape that comes to mind. What the model cannot do is decide which of the three fits what the student wants to say. That is the assignment.

Illingworth places this as the second of five steps. If you want the whole line, extend the activity with steps 4 and 5: let AI shorten or clarify after the human draft, then read aloud and check it still sounds like the student.

Procedure

1. One sentence, written by hand: who am I writing this for, and what should they be able to do or understand afterwards? This sentence stays in view for the whole assignment.
2. Put that sentence to an AI tool and ask for three possible structures: headings and order. Say explicitly that it must not write any paragraphs.
3. Read the three and choose one. Write two sentences on why it fits the sentence from step 1 - or build a fourth structure that is none of the three, with the same reasoning.
4. Write the opening paragraph yourself, with no AI open. This is the step not to skip: it is where the voice starts.
5. Plenary, ten minutes: what did the three structures offer that you had not thought of, and what was predictable?

Discussion questions

• Were the three structures genuinely different, or variations on one?
• Which would you have chosen without seeing the other two? Does that say something about your habits?
• What happened to your opening paragraph once you had settled the structure: easier, or not?
• Where would this go wrong if step 2 had asked for running text?

Assessment opportunity

Ask for the sentence from step 1, the three structures and the reasoning as an appendix to the finished work. It is quick to mark and shows something the final product hides: whether the student chose the structure or inherited it.

Extension options

In a later course, reverse step 2: have students draft three structures themselves and then put them to a model, asking which is strongest and why. Now the model is the reader rather than the inventor, and the student judges the answer instead of adopting it.

Reference

• Based on Sam Illingworth, Keep Your Voice: A Slow AI Guide to Writing with AI and Staying Human (2026), theslowai.substack.com. The step comes from the five-step workflow in that guide, where it is called "generate structures, not prose".
• The guide is written for writers rather than teachers, and carries no open licence. This activity - its shape, its steps and its questions - is ours; what we took is the idea, not the wording.