I’ve finished the first day of camp, just fine, but I came home to pick up some bedding and my PC and I found a big piece of dog poo in the inbox of my email.
It’s an email all in Korean, asking why the guy got an F in his English class. Not a single word of English, not even an attempt to communicate with me in the language I was grading him on. And he’s wondering why he got an F. And it’s not signed with a name at the end, but the user’s handle is the name of a Greek god.
I’ll show you the response I sent him.
Hello,
What is your name? I don’t think your name is “Zeus”, but there’s no other name on the email.
Did you just send me an email asking about your grade in English class?
And did you send the email without your name? Without your class number? And without a single word of English in it?
Are you still wondering if you deserve a higher grade? If so, you can email me again, in English, with some information so I know who I am talking to and what I am talking about.
Gord
Good grief, as if I’d consider raising his grade for sending me an email without any English in it.
But of course he deserves an A+, after all he came to class at least once and managed to remember your email address. That effort should not go unrewarded!
btw, there is no way to submit comments from the individual archive page, one must do that from the index page…
I entered my grades today and within fifteen minutes got an email from a student questioning her B+! She said she thought had done quite well in the course and couldn’t imagine why I gave her such a low grade!
I loved your reply to Zeus…I fear for your future safety however!
Blinger,
I know. It’s a tactic I set up to hurt the spammers’ access, while I was under a major attack. However, I will probably get around to fixing it when I get around to doing a massive site reformat sometime in February.
Joshua: Wow, that’s quick! Amazing how rather un-diligent students are so diligent in checking their marks and begging for increases in their final grades, huh?
Rhiannon: actually, it’s a bit of a stock response, since I get one or two emails like that every semester. :) I don’t fear for my safety at all, though. I’ll be fine. :)
Geez, what kind of dumbass would do a thing like that? I’m surprised you even bothered to reply to him so politely.
Hahaha, Wooj, it happens at least once or twice to every prof every semester where I work. I tend to take some small joy in writing the sort of responses I posted here, but shockingly, nobody ever seems to get that I’m NOT going to up their grade when they write back a second time in very broken English. Though, actually, this guy did write, asking if I am “a hallucination” and requesting that I check my records since his exam grades were excellent and his attendance was spot-on. It’s remotely possible I goofed up the grade-entries, of course. But it’s still pretty stupid to write me in Korean to tell me that.
Another school of thought would be that I should be flattered since he is assuming my Korean is better than it is. My students tend to know I am studying the language, and hear me speak it outside of class sometimes, or when I’m explaining a really tricky grammar point. But I still think it’s silly to email your English pro in Korean. :)