As for references, I was asked to proof-read one written for a former SHS student who’d spent a year in the UK doing a foundation course and was now applying for Oxbridge (forget which one). It basically ended up as a complete rewrite. The original consisted of five paragraphs about how well he worked with others and how conscientious he was, followed by a single one saying, ‘He also got good marks in subjects X, Y, and Z.’

“Er, Sensei, could we be a little more specific about his grades? May I have a look at his transcript?”

Turns out he’d sat the nationwide preliminary Uni entrance tests, and ranked in the top 100. Out of about 20,000 entrants.

“Oh. Do you think we should mention that?”

I put it in the first paragraph.

On a related note, at a teaching seminar I attended a few years ago we did a really interesting experiment. We divided into small groups and told we weren’t allowed to speak. We were given a deck of cards a sheet of rules, and told to start playing a game. After a few minutes some members of each group were told to join other groups, and we continued playing in silence while periodically changing groups for some time. When the exercise ended we discovered that each group had been given different rules to play by. When we moved between groups everyone had a different idea about how the game should work. Without being able to speak or even realising that it was happening, someone in each group inevitably dominated the others and “enforced” their version of the rules. This wasn’t an inter-cultural thing, although there were some ALTs there. It was about learning more about your own personality and how that impacts your teaching style. It was really, really interesting though. Among the people who did not come out as dominating there were some who simply accepted that the rules had changed but also some who became annoyed and resentful but didn’t do anything about it.