An update on the piece I wrote about S last week

On Wednesday of last week, I had to email him about a few administrative things in regards to his upcoming exam. As a last minute effort, I decided to put a strongly worded bit in to, hopefully, encourage him to study. Here's what it said:

It is very important that you study English the next five weeks, up to the exam. Your English is good, but it needs to be better. You have a lot of potential to do well on the exam AND better your English, but it's up to you to do it. You have a lot of vocabulary to learn, writing to do and other things that you need to know. You can do it, but you have to want to. Try setting aside 30 minutes a day study, you'll be surprised how much that'll help.

It made some kind of impact on him, because a good friend of his (K - a student in my Friday afternoon class) mentioned it to me. He said that S took it as my way of saying he was lazy. Switching from 'frustrated teacher' to 'politeness' mode, I told K that it wasn't meant that way (even though, of course, it really was), it was just a preview of a small lecture I'd be giving to all of my exam students this week - full well knowing that he'd pass that back to S. I'm not sure if S will buy it though, as he's a smart guy. He didn't email me back, so I assume he was quite steamed over it (on the rare occasion I've had to email him in the past, he has always replied).

S came to class at the beginning of it today and handed in his essay. However, he said that he couldn't stay because he had a report to finish. I have no idea if that was true or not.

Progress? Hopefully.

Anyway, on the recommendation of his classmates, I emailed him yesterday evening to invite him to attend the Friday class this week due to the number of lessons he's missed. I also threw this in:

I hope you didn't take my email last week the wrong way, all of my exam students will be getting that lecture this week.

I probably shouldn't have, though. I'm walking a fine line.

****** Update 19h43 ******

Here is his reponse to my latest (and final) email (I didn't clean up his English):

No problem, I know that I'm sometimes a little bit lazy, and I need some extra motivation... It's very good, how you do that!

It's over now. If he wants to work, I'm here for him. If not, that's his choice. I hope he does, though. It'd be a shame to see a talent for languages like his go to waste.