The general lecture presents students with an introduction to the topics and techniques that they will be putting into practice that week in the lab. It also allows the professor to preach a weekly sermon on the importance of writing. Writing lab sections are conducted by graduate teaching assistants, who give lectures and lead discussions on various aspects of writing and who assign and grade the students' writing work.
Students usually have about two dozen graded writing assignments throughout the semester.
Teaching assistants also give news quizzes, AP style quizzes, grammar quizzes and word precision quizzes. Many of these quizzes are computerized so that students may take them quickly and receive their scores and feedback immediately.