Sending an email to your professor is definitely different from chatting with your closest friend. You have to observe proper grammar, address your mentor properly and meet his or her expectations as someone who has achieved a level of education higher than you. Thus, here are 12 steps that you should follow when sending an email to your professor.
1.) Go over your syllabus. The answers to your questions may have already been stated there, so sending an email to your professor with your queries might give an impression that you’re not listening in his or her class.
2.) Make sure that sending an email to your professor is your last resort. If you can talk to your mentor after class, then do so. We may be living in a modern world, but having a personal conversation with your professor might benefit you more than a standard email.
3.) Make use of your student account in sending an email to your mentor. By doing so, you can be sure that your message will go straight to his or her inbox and not into the spam folder.
4.) Put meaningful words as the subject of your email. This will help you get the attention of your professor and receive a reply as soon as possible. It would be best for you to key in on your course, class schedule and the main topic of your message in your email’s subject line.
5.) Don’t forget to start your email with a formal greeting. Address your professor professionally by using his or her last name. Consider whether she’s married or not for you to know what to use between “Ms” and “Mrs”.
6.) Get straight to the point and keep your email short as much as possible. Use polite expressions in getting your message across and letting your teacher know of your concerns. Never include irrelevant information in your email if you don’t want your issues to be disregarded.
7.) If your email is all about your issues as a student, then politely suggest ways on how you and your professor can solve things. Just don’t forget the fact that your mentor’s a busy individual. Thus, your suggestions must be of convenience for both parties.
8.) End your email with your complete name and signature. You also have to type your class and course details below your signature for your professor to immediately get a grasp of what you are talking about. This will save him or her from looking into his or her class records just to get the information that you need.
9.) Go over your email. Read it over twice or even thrice (and even read it out loud, so you can hear that it makes sense). Make sure that you have considered everything that we have discussed in this article and that none of your words are spelled incorrectly.
10.) Have another person read your email too. Ask whether it’s offensive or too personal for you to make the necessary changes to your message. Sometimes, you need to seek the opinion of others for you to see things outside of your own perception.
11.) Wait for your professor’s reply. If you still haven’t received a response after two weeks, then you can consider sending another message just to check whether your teacher has received the email or not. If you just wanted to inform your professor about something, then you don’t need to wait for a reply.
12.) Don’t fail to acknowledge a response if you have received one. Express your gratitude to your professor but you don’t need to send a long email for this matter. Just send a reply with the words “thank you”.