1. Have the student write out a description of the audience he is addressing in this paper: What do these people know? What will they want to learn? Does the paper take these aspects into account?

2. As the student reads the paper aloud, jot down questions you have about certain places where you need further information. If the student prefers, you can read the paper aloud, stopping whenever you have questions (be sure that the student makes notes about these places that will need further work).

3. If the student has a handwritten draft, suggest that he type it. Doing so provides another means of distancing the writer from his work and helps him to see it more clearly. Furthermore, revision becomes much easier once a paper is word-processed.

4. Make sure that the student knows how to do basic cut-and- paste functions on a computer and how to use spell check, grammar check, and the thesaurus.

5. Ask the student to do an outline after the draft to see what has actually occurred in the piece, as opposed to what was intended.

6. Ask the student to annotate the parts of the essay, that is, to write the main idea of each paragraph in the margin of the paper. This step will determine if what the student intended is in fact what he actually wrote; it will also allow him to see if the sequencing of the paper makes sense. Alternate idea: You can do the annotation.