As soon as I saw her, I understood I was in trouble. The tiny 10-year-old girl was staring at me with that specific facial expression which probably only dentists have to enjoy all day long! Whatever question I asked, whatever activity I suggested, her reaction was pretty much the same -- she was frozen with horror. She was sent to our private language school after having been the worst in English at her key school with a pretty strict ELT syllabus , with her peers  teasing her for her mistakes in English. Moreover, her state school teacher called her name. To make things worse, she was under pressure from her family for getting bad marks in English. She was definitely expecting me to carry on the same way with her. I have to admit that I had been staring at her with probably the same expression for a while before eventually she handed in an absolutely incredible  composition which I had previously asked the class to write. It was written in perfect handwriting, was full of clever ideas and had correct paragraphing. The girl got her first excellent mark in English, and I praised her generously and from then on I started using her writing skills to support the others. Before doing an oral retelling of a story, she wrote it down. Before presenting her oral project, she was allowed to do the same thing. The day she first put up her hand to orally answer my question addressed to the class I was incredibly  happy. She taught me how to approach withdrawn students -- find the skill which they can excel  at, in her case writing, and help the student use it to develop other skills! The writer's first impression of the little girl was that she was  _  .
incredibly dull hard to cope with far too lovely pretty confident