How to email your teacher/professor?

[Ike]

Every I email my teacher, I have a formal attitude, but my teacher's reply was very relaxed.

I am confused now. Should I be more relaxed the next time I email my teacher?

[spatio]

Honestly, I have found this scenario to be the case with just about every professor I've ever corresponded with.  If you're comfortable doing so, matching their tone would likely be just fine.  I personally prefer to keep all of my emails at least semi-professional (i.e., header with "Hello Dr. XYZ", body, closing/signature), even if their responses are always along the lines of "sounds good, thx. :)  Sent from my iPhone." xD  This is just my personal style, but then again, I'm the type of person that when a professor asks the class to call them by their first name I physically cannot bring myself to do so lmao

 

The only thing I wouldn't drop would be the closing and signature, even if you keep a relaxed tone in the message body, as professors have dozens of students to keep track of.

Edited April 14, 2020 by spatio

[StormBirdRising]

I always maintained a professional manner when speaking with teachers and professors, and I found that it worked out very well for me. 

[purpledragonclaw]

For me, it depended on the teacher and about how comfortable I was with them. If they're more laid-back in class, and it comes through in their communications, I would match that tone in my emails. I used to joke with a lot of my teachers. For serious teachers, being serious is the way to go. 

[Ike]

32 minutes ago, spatio said:

Honestly, I have found this scenario to be the case with just about every professor I've ever corresponded with.  If you're comfortable doing so, matching their tone would likely be just fine.  I personally prefer to keep all of my emails at least semi-professional (i.e., header with "Hello Dr. XYZ", body, closing/signature), even if their responses are always along the lines of "sounds good, thx. :)  Sent from my iPhone." xD  This is just my personal style, but then again, I'm the type of person that when a professor asks the class to call them by their first name I physically cannot bring myself to do so lmao

 

The only thing I wouldn't drop would be the closing and signature, even if you keep a relaxed tone in the message body, as professors have dozens of students to keep track of.

 

Thank you for your reply.

I can understand your views on the relationship between teachers and students. Elders taught me to respect my teachers since I was young, and I couldn't relax when I faced them. It may be the reason of my character, I don't want to trouble them for any reason.
Semi-professional sounds like a good idea! I will try next time.

[Aqub]

I have been in online school since 9th grade and boy do I relate to this problem. When starting any sort of online learning class you're always told to include your signature, use proper grammar and avoid text speak, and be mindful of what you write because people can't hear your tone of voice through text... So yeah, I think semi-professional is the way to go.

I've always written messages to my teachers formally and respectfully, because authority figures are scary and trying to decide what to say to them and how to say it makes me so nervous! And then I get very casual responses from them, lol. College professors seem even more prone to short, casual responses than high school teachers were. I'm not sure if I should be surprised by that or not.  

Edited April 19, 2020 by Aqub

[Tiira]

I really relate to the problem, too. I study Italian language as secondary subject which means I should follow the Italian conventions when emailing those profs. To be honest, though, I haven't had many difficulties with them because they usually keep their messages quite formal so I just had to find out what kind of greetings, closings etc. I should use. The Finnish profs are another story... I even remember receiving once a reply like "OK! J. N.". And I had spent plenty of time to write him as politely as I could. Another unforgettable reply I've got from a prof: "I told you so!".

 

I'm sure there are differencies between Finnish and American conventions as well. Still, I think you'd always be safe having a formal attitude (not excessively of course), even if your teacher or professor replies using colloquial language. My best advice would be to first keep it formal when contacting them, especially if you're new to each other, and if their reply is more relaxed you could then match that tone – or perhaps one slightly more formal if their messages are very relaxed indeed, like those real-life examples of mine...

Edited April 19, 2020 by Varislapsi

[Aqub]

"I told you so!" made me laugh. What ever did you do to deserve that?  

Unfortunately in online college courses I've barely had any contact with my professors, so it's really hard to feel comfortable when I do need to send them a message. 😓

[Tiira]

Me too. It was about my Bachelor's Thesis. I have the tendency to exceed page limits so my professor had warned me that I should make sure I have the correct font settings and margins before I even start, otherwise I would end up writing too much. Usually I don't do that until I'm done with the actual text and I didn't take her advice seriously, thinking I could estimate the lenght well enough, even if she did repeat it quite a few times during the process. Just guess what happened (with the correct settings, I had twice as many pages as I should have had) and if I ever realised that before the deadline was very close (might have been the night before) so I had to write her a humble email that I indeed was having a "little" problem...

Edited April 20, 2020 by Varislapsi

[beezervanessa]

On 4/15/2020 at 3:19 AM, Ike said:

 

Thank you for your reply.

I can understand your views on the relationship between teachers and students. Elders taught me to respect my teachers since I was young, and I couldn't relax when I faced them. It may be the reason of my character, I don't want to trouble them for any reason.
Semi-professional sounds like a good idea! I will try next time.

Writing to a teacher, unlike writing or texting to a friend, requires a more thorough approach. The stage of training a profession is the beginning of your professional career, so you need to relate to any type of communication with the appropriate professionalism, including e-mails. For example, it is recommended that you use your internal email account at the school ( trust my paper reviews) and be sure to start the letter with a formal greeting. The style teacher’s email should resemble a classic business letter. Its text should be concise and correct in terms of spelling, grammar, and punctuation!

Edited May 12, 2020 by beezervanessa