<p>Hi, would someone please give opinions/BTDT about these two questions:</p>
<ol>
<li><p>Student takes several foreign languages and excels. Specific teachers have poor English. Department Head also loves student and knows about all the success - and is a native English speaker with a doctorate. Can/should he write the letter summarizing all language performance?</p></li>
<li><p>Student excels in a certain academic discipline but hasn't had any one teacher more than once - again, Department Head knows student's successes via all of her department members' experiences, and some academic competitions. Again, can/should she write the letter?</p></li>
</ol>
<ol>
<li><p>Yes, you wouldn’t want a teacher to write a letter with flawed English. You want a teacher who can praise you with perfect English.</p></li>
<li><p>Pick a person whom you think knows you the best. </p></li>
</ol>
<p>@paul2752 - thank you! But the question was, in either case, would a department head who never taught you directly, be acceptable as the sort of medium through which the other teachers’ views can be passed along? Particularly if the student has won departmental awards?</p>
<p>Oh I thought you wrote that the department head actually knows the student. Not sure if that is a good idea…</p>
<p>This is what I did. I asked my Spanish teacher(whom I have known for 2 years very well. She is a Puerto Rican) to write recom letter for me.
She had perfect English but she told me that she asked a fellow teacher, who is a native speaker and teachers Spanish as well,to look over the grammar. Are ALL of the languages teachers poor in English in that school?</p>
<p>Thanks. No, it’s more complicated:</p>
<p>Language#1 teacher - thinks the student walks on water. “best ever” Pretty poor written English
Language#2 teacher - fairly high opinion of student, plus does indep study with student. Excellent English
Dept head - very high opinion of student, has given dept awards in both languages, never taught student. Excellent English</p>
<p>Does the teacher #1 know that his/her English is poor?</p>
<p>Department heads are perfectly fine, better if they have taught the student.</p>
<p>FWIW, my son has done some skulking around asking about who does “great recommendations”, and he decided to ask a teacher he had junior year instead of a teacher he knew previously and has this year, because the former is supposedly “great” at recommendations according to various sources.</p>
<p>Perhaps the student can ask around a bit. I would not go with teacher #1 just because of poor written English (how do you know this by the way?), unless you can get a GC to review it.</p>
<p>Never taught the student is not a problem, if the person has known the student for years.</p>
<p>I disagree. I don’t think the teacher’s English being poor is a deal breaker. The reader is not going to judge the student by the teacher’s grammatical errors. The most important thing in a great letter of recommendation is specific detail - a great anecdote or colorful description about what the applicant is like. I would rather have Teacher #1 or Teacher #2 than the “summary” written by the department head. </p>
<p>@VSGPeanut101 yeah I agree, but isn’t it better to make the letter easier to read? We don’t know how bad his/her English is.</p>
<p>@fretfulmother , is there any other language teacher who can look over the recom letter? does teacher #1 know that her English is poor? How bad is it? is it bad enough to write a simple sentence that has messy orders of subjects, verbs, and nouns?</p>
<p>@paul2752 has a good point. It is relevant to figure out if the English is just “not perfect” - which would be fine - or unreadable. If the teacher is so uncomfortable writing in English that they do only a cursory job, “John was in my class and he did good.” That is not going to be helpful. If they are able to write a “flowery” letter but mess up a couple verb tenses or spellings, that letter can still be a more valuable one than the “perfect” but less intimate Dept Head.</p>
<p>Thanks, guys! Ok, so I think Teacher #1 has really poor English. I’m her colleague and she’s asked for my help in writing emails and so forth. Her English is better than my second language 
but that’s not saying much. It’s not a few commas, unfortunately. I think Teacher #1 does know that her English is poor, because she has asked for help on other written things before.</p>
<p>Re Department Heads - what consists of knowing the student well? It’s so hard to gauge. Probably Teacher #2 is the right one to go with, in all of this. I will say that the DH has said of the student, “he’s the best we have”. Teacher #2 has never waxed that ecstatic.</p>
<p>In no particular order:
It isn’t about the teacher thinking your kid walks on water- it’s about them being able to write an LoR that covers what adcoms need to know. First hand experience teaching a student is far more important than second hand, because that;s what an LoR is: the teacher’s classroom experience with the kid. (It would be odd for someone else to write a ref unless the teacher is on leave.) Anyone competent in English can help the teacher edit for major errors or to make the note clearer. The GC will do some second hand repeating. </p>
<p>At least one LoR from a teacher in a subject relevant to the academic ideas- ie, if you want STEM, have a math or sci rec. And, check the colleges’ requirements. </p>
<p>Thanks, @lookingforward.</p>