Teachers like to write comments about "voice" on students’ writing. “Voice” in writing is very tricky. It is very difficult to define, let alone teach. Because the concept of voice is so slippery, I like to approach it with a more accessible concept called tone. A writer’s tone shows his attitude toward the subject. Academic writing shouldn’t be void of emotion or “just the facts ma’am.” Academic essay writing is editorial by nature; it is analytical which means it is the personal ideas of the writer. Therefore, voice, or tone, is appropriate and wanted.

As I mentioned in an earlier post, grammar is the last thing a student or the person helping her should worry about. Of course, correct glaring errors, but any work on grammar and sentence structure should be done at the very end. Think about it, if you and your child fight about commas, colons and semi colons (and you will fight about it) throughout a paragraph but then decide that the paragraph needs to be changed or added to later, you did all that work for nothing.

Sometimes students come to me with a great problem; they have tons of ideas. Brainstorming went well for them and now they are looking at a healthy mess of points they would like to make but have no idea where to start. I always tell them it is better to have too many ideas than too few. If your child needs help after the brainstorming process, you may consider using what teachers call a bubble chart, or what corporate America calls a "flow chart".

Students came into my writing center for help on an assignment at all different points in the writing process. Some students came with a rough draft to review with me; but, more often, I would see students who had not even started the assignment. What do you do when your child comes home with an assignment and has no idea how to start? It will be hard for you to figure out what the teacher wants since you were not there for discussion. Helping your child help himself will pay off in the long run, especially once he is on his own in college.