Many EFL students have difficulty generating ideas for writing topics. Writing instructors tend to select topics that are too abstract, repetitive, uninteresting, vague, too broad or unfamiliar. To help students generate ideas for writing topics, the present study suggests the integration of participation goals in writing instruction. Participation goals are those that require the students' involvement in social and civic issues. Writing teachers can select topics related to local and global social, educational, health, political and/or technological issues with which the students are familiar and to which they can relate. The students can describe a problem, its causes and suggest solutions to it. The integration of participation goals proved to be effective in developing college students' writing skills.