Spring 2005

Writing Assessment by Claire Moisan and Helyn Wohlend
In this issue, editors and Writing Lab instructors Claire Moisan and Helyn Wohlwend present Carol Trosset's findings regarding tutorial faculty's assessment of student writing skills.

Fall 2002

Evolution of a Grinnell Writer by Janet Carl
In this issue, editor Janet Carl explores the growth of one student writer, Katie Mears '03. She draws on contributions by Bob Grey, Judy Hunter, Vince Eckhart, Victoria Brown and Pablo Silva.

Spring 2002

Revision as Means to Improve Student Writing by Janet Carl
Revision as a strategy for helping students improve their writing is the subject of this issue. Contributors include Chris Hunter, Sarah Purcell, Matthew Pacholec, Victoria Brown, Kent McClelland, Ralph Savarese, Jean Ketter, Molly Blackes '02 and Laura Frantz '04.

Fall 2000

Writing Lab Staff Molds Competent, Effective Writers by Janet Carl
In this issue, editor Janet Carl discusses the Writing Lab's philosophy and services, its history and patterns of usage and the ways in which Writing Lab instructors complement the efforts of classroom faculty.

Fall 1999

A Day in the Life of the Writing Lab, 1999
A reprise of the 1995 article, this one is authored by some new and some continuing Writing Lab staff members. They describe the face-to-face interaction that comprises the work of the Writing Lab at Grinnell College.

Fall 1997

Using a Learning Portfolio in an Upper Level Course by Judy Hunter
This article describes the portfolio system used by Professor Sociology Kent McClelland in several upper level courses.

Teaching Writing Through Syntax by Elizabeth Dobbs
In this article, Professor of English Elizabeth Dobbs describes how she teaqches writing by emphasizing relationships between words, sentences, and ideas with Dr. Syntax.

Spring 1997

Interview with Sylvia Thorson-Smith by Judy Hunter
In this interview with Assistant in the Writing lab Judy Hunter, Sylvia Thorson-Smith, Lecturer in Religious Studies and Sociology, explains how her writing assignments are closely related to the goals of her feminist pedagogy.

Confessions of an Academic Honesty Lady by Judy Hunter
This article by Judy Hunter, Assistant in the Writing Lab, examines the societal trends which make teaching about academic honesty so difficulty and so important.

Fall 1996

A Writing Experiment with E-papers and E-mail by Chris Hunter
In this article, Professor of Sociology Chris Hunter discusses an experiment he tried in a 200-level sociology course; students submitted papers by e-mail and class members offered feedback on their peers' papers, again through electronic means.

Fall 1995

A Day in the Life of the Writing Lab by the Writing Lab Staff
In this article, each of the instructors in the Grinnell College Writing Lab (Kevin Crim, Karin Connelly, Judy Hunter, Mathilda Liberman, and Betty Moffet) describes his or her work during one day in the lab. This aritcle drew more comment from the college community than any other ever published in the Writing Forum.

The Writing Lab and the New Professor by Jared Gardner
This article describes the interaction between Gardner, at that time a relatively new member of the English Department, and the staff of the Writing Lab.

Spring 1995

Dear Faculty . . . or Writing Letters to Learn by Judy Hunter
In this article, Judy Hunter, Assistant in the Writing Lab, uses a letter format to suggest how writing letters may help students learn. The article was inspired by a workshop presented by Toby Fulwiler at the Winter Workshop of the Conference on college Composition and Communication in January of 1995.

Fall 1994

New Approach to Academic Honesty by Helen Scott
This article by Helen Scott, Associate Dean of the Faculty at Grinnell College, explains the college's then newly-established approach to academic honesty, an approach which includes a mandatory lecture on the subject to all new students and a required individual exercise to demonstrate students' understanding of the issue.

Spring 1994

Grading Criteria for Academic Papers by Kent McClelland
In this article, Kent McClelland, Professor of Sociology, shares the rubric he and others in his departmetn have used in grading papers.

Writings Are Made of Sentences by Peter Connelly
This this article, Peter Connolly, Professor of English, describes his method of grading papers.

Fall 1993

Karin Connelly on Who Uses What
In October 1992, Karin Connelly, Assistant in the Writing lab, investigated what citation formats various departments at Grinnell required of students. She comments here on the results of her research.

Academic Honesty by Mathilda Liberman
In this article, Mathilda Liberman, Director of the Writing Lab at Grinnell College, considers the writing challenges that may lead students to violate the rules of academic honesty unwittingly. In particular, she examines the difficulty of paraphrasing.

Grading Papers at Grinnell by Judy Hunter
This article explains the grading practices of four professors: Joe Cummins of Philosophy and Classics, Mary Lynn Broe of the English Department, Johanna Meehan of Philosophy, and Jim Dillon of American Studies.

Spring 1993

Learning Disabilities: A Case Study of a Grinnell College Student by Judy Hunter
In this article, Judy Hunter, Assistant in the Writing lab, summarizes the strategies used by one learning disabled student at Grinnell.

How the College Works with Learning Disabled Students by Judy Hunter
In this follow-up article, Hunter surveys the procedures which Grinnell College has in place to help learning disabled students succeed.

Fall 1992

Brown Describes Weekly Writings, Workshops by Victoria Brown
In this article, Victoria Brown, Professor History at Grinnell, describes how she uses weekly writings and peer review to teach writing in her courses.

Use of the Writing Lab by Mathilda Liberman
In this article, Mathilda Liberman, Director of the Grinnell College Writing Lab, describes ways in which faculty can make use of the resources of the Writing Lab.

Peter Connelly on Faculty Writing Seminars
In this article, Professor of English Peter Connelly describes his view of the history of the writing program at Grinnell, particularly of the faculty writing seminars which have been in place since the early 1970's.

Opportunities for Student Writing in Statistics Courses by Tom Moore
Tom Moore, Associate Professor of Mathematics, describes how students in statistics courses use writing as a tool for learning.

Spring 1992

Question by Don Smith
In this short piece, Professor of History Don Smith asks for a response to the notion that the college formally adopt Corbett's Little English Handbook as a standard text.

Should We Adopt Corbett? by Hudy Hunter
This article responds to Smith's Question by quoting the description offered by John Stone, Lecturer in Mathematics and Computer Science, of how members of a faculty writing seminar reacted to the idea of using Corbett's set of correction symbols.

What to call this?
Members of the Writing Lab Staff respond to a professor's question about what to call a particular error in student writing.

A Point of Grammar/A Point of Rhetoric by Don Smith
Don Smith, Professor of History at Grinnell College, examines a common problem in student writing, an error that is part grammatical and part rhetorical.

Grinnell College Writing lab Guide to the Use of Verb Tenses in Academic Writing by Kevin Crim
Kevin Crim offers a handout that explains how to decide which verb tense to use in various kinds of academic discourse.

Dobbs Tries Innovative Approach by Judy Hunter
This article describes how Elizabeth Dobbs, Professor of English, integrates the work of the Writing Lab with her classroom procedures for teaching students to write.