I rarely email professors, but when I do, I try my best to avoid spelling and grammatical errors. I spend more time proofreading the email than typing it because I don't want to make myself sound unprofessional. So I'll waste time trying to perfect an email, no matter how simple it is, just so I won't come off as a half-wit to the person in charge of my grade for the class.
Now I understand that being a teacher must make your life very busy, what with tests, homework, and essays to look through, but DEAR PROFESSOR(S), I just wish that you would take your time to write out a decent reply. I'm not asking for a paragraph or anything in-depth, but I get so insecure when all I get the next day is a "Okay" or "fine". Not all students are satisfied with that answer. It makes things worse especially when I have other questions in my email that you have failed to answer and it makes me think that you don't care.
I've spoken to many other students about this and they agree with me. We can have an entire conversation about how great a professor is simply from the fact that they replied to our email with more than one word and how they capitalize the necessary words along with inserting periods IN WHICH MANY PROFESSORS FAIL TO DO.
I believe that if teachers want their students to stop with the chatspeak and improve their writing, then they themselves should try to be a proper example. Yes, it's the internet, but I fail to think of that as a decent excuse for not using correct spelling and grammar.
4 comments:
Very interesting, and I'm happy that you brought this up! I've studied in 3 different countries, and about a dozen schools in the past 10 years of my education (since middle-school), and trust me when I say, that I've only seen this pattern in the city of Los Angeles, or perhaps California. What I see is that there's a higher (or perhaps the highest compared to anywhere I've been) pattern of people NOT being happy with their lives and mostly "Don't Care" about their work. It is astonishing to me, because I see such a big difference. But at the end of the day, I feel you pain. Yes, there's no excuse for ignorance and shouldering off responsibility. ;)
I don't think I have the same problem. Most of the time the e-mail come back from my professors are O.K. in grammer. If their answers are short, that means I need less time to take care of my matter. I do see errors in professors on the black board or hand outs but nobody is perfect!
Tom Liao.
I have had many different type of teachers and depending any combination of age, gender, & how long they have been teaching you will get good & bad teachers. When I am lucky enough to have a good teacher I take advantage of it & learn all I can from them, sometimes even after I am no longer in their class. Where as bad teachers teach me to be more independent & cover all my bases when I do work for the class. I look at it as practice for the different types of bosses I may have in the future.
I agree that with you. However, you'll get some teachers that are bad. Some will be good teachers that will put in practice what you are asking for.
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