How do I ask my professor for a reference letter?

I requested a letter of reference from a former college professor. It is full of grammatical errors?

• I am a recent graduate of a teacher education program. I am substitute teaching and applying to full-time teaching positions, which require letters of reference in the application. The problem is, one of my letters of reference is full of grammatical errors. It is almost painful to read, there are so many errors. I worry this letter would reflect poorly on my academic preparation for teaching. The quality of the program I completed has worried me for a while, as I did not feel challenged by the teaching "fluff" classes. I think this letter is a reflection of all the "fluff" and unchanging classes I had to put up with in my education degree. I do not have other references I can ask for a letter. I have used my supervising teachers for student teaching, and another professor. This teacher taught the majority of my education classes during my college career. Should I ask this teacher to rewrite the letter, with grammar that would reflect the knowledge of a competent educator? I am also considering volunteering as an ESL or literacy tutor, then requesting a letter of reference from the facility I volunteer at.

• Answer:

  Mark it in red pen, write your own covering letter to your future employer explaining that you are embarrassed to send it because of all the errors so you have marked them in case your reference was some kind of test from your previous college professor ;-) Or you could get in touch with your old college and ask for another one. I work in a school; in the offices. If I found out that a teacher had sent out a badly written letter and it hadn't come through me for checking, I think I would be quite annoyed and draft another one for the student. You may feel bad about asking for another letter but any admin assistant/secretary shouldn't be afraid to approach a teacher and tell them that they'd made errors. So see if you can go through the secretarial staff instead. Most schools wouldn't want a letter like that to go out, they should be happy to correct it so it doesn't reflect badly on them.