We designed and implemented a first-year seminar in science course at the University of British Columbia to allow students to develop and improve their scientific writing and argumentation skills. To evaluate the efficacy of the course, we examined the progression that students made between the beginning and the end of the course as assessed by the criteria outlined in our writing rubric and with a student survey. Our analysis demonstrates that increased exposure to writing, including multiple opportunities to write and receive feedback in a science-specific context, results in consistently better writing and argumentation skills for the majority of students. We believe that these gains were a direct result of our course design. We have found that the first-year seminar format offers the opportunity to connect students with academic writing in a science-specific context, to model the writing experiences of science faculty members, and to provide students with constructive feedback on their writing in a supportive setting.