My son would like a letter of recommendation from his Italian teacher, but she is not a native English speaker. He is concerned about potential grammatical errors in the letter and how that would reflect upon him. Should he ask another teacher, even though she’d provide an excellent letter and knows him well?
They aren’t grading a letter of recommendation. The best letter of rec comes from someone he likes, who likes him too. Letters of rec are to provide insight on the student, not the quality of grammar or punctuation. Colleges care about these letters because they can see what kind of student the kid might be in the classroom and on campus.
Far better to get an enthusiastic letter of rec from someone who says good things about him but maybe used the wrong verb. A boring, well written letter is worse.
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Your son is applying to college, not any of his teachers. No college is grading a LoR for effective use of English.
Furthermore, as a parent, you may want to share with your son than most white collar workers in the US whose native language is not English (a group that includes me) have an excellent command of the language.
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How would his teacher’s grammatical errors reflect in any way on him? She is not the applicant, he is. Her grammatical errors do not matter. For LORs, it is the content that matters, not verb tense or semicolon use or other relative minutiae.
Thank you–I appreciate your insight.