Week #1 Feedback E: Positive Points

It has been an honor and a joy to work with you. Your intelligence and aptitude humble me. Thank you for choosing to make my class a part of your time here. Please be patient with me and empathize with my efforts to help you to improve your communication in legal English contexts. I always have a method to my madness. Not every activity or reading may appeal to you, but please be mindful that ours is a mixed class of learners with differing experiences, goals, and needs. I cannot always teach to the most fluent students nor to the least fluent. I try to balance the more and less demanding tasks. If you are missing anything in my messages, I hope that it is only the jokes.

1. Fluency
Some of you are quite fluent. It is impressive and intimidating for some other students, and for me. For my part, because students with greater fluency need help with more difficult language and communication skills, it can be a much more demanding classroom. Coaxing a sprinter to a .05 second improvement can take a lot of work with little perceived benefit vs. helping a distance runner shave minutes or ten seconds off of her time.

For those of you who are in the admirable but at times frustrating position of being quite fluent, please work on the requests listed in previous posts regarding higher language use and non-verbal language. Most language learners do not push themselves beyond the level that you have achieved because of the perceived small rewards for great efforts. Additionally, outside of a native speaker environment, there is always a lot of work involved with just maintaining one's skills.

On the other hand, for those of you who are quite fluent and will continue working on your skills, there is always more to learn. You can acquire more vocabulary, different ways of expressing the same ideas, scripts for different communication contexts, cultural knowledge, and nonverbal communication.

2. Politeness
Some of you already have a good command of politeness strategies used in English.

3. Effort
Many of you have impressed me with your demonstrated efforts to practice your English and learn about American legal culture. Thank you for your hard work and your sincere interest.