Discussion of exemplars of student work is a productive means of explaining tacit knowledge and guiding students into the requirements of academic writing. Through two cycles of action research in a post-secondary institution in Hong Kong, this study examines how exemplars can be used to enhance student understanding of quality and to promote positive transfer of strategies and skills from exemplars to assessment task. Interventions included peer discussion, teacher-led interaction and student mini-presentations in relation to exemplars. To gauge perceptions of these processes, we collected data via open-ended surveys and focus group interviews with students, commentaries from a critical friend and a teacher-researcher reflective journal. Findings suggest that peer discussion and teacher guidance play a complementary role in engineering a supportive learning environment for positive transfer of insights. Peer discussion is useful in allowing students to generate ideas and negotiate meanings. Teacher guidance serves to explicate the characteristics of good quality work and to increase students' critical awareness of the differences between exemplars and their own writing. Teaching implications for dialogic use of exemplars are discussed, and some avenues for future exemplar-related research outlined.