I was talking to a student in hallway. I happen to think this student is somewhat smart, but she doesn't try very hard, and she gets low scores on tests and such.
She had impressed me, a while back, with a speech in one of my new intermediate-level debate classes which she'd penciled on some scrap paper in class in the few minutes before it was required. The speech was entirely compatible – in clarity, understanding and detail – with speeches the other students in the class had spent the last several weeks preparing (writing essays as homework and getting my feedback on them), but she'd done it in the few minutes before giving the speech.
I have a long history with this student, too – she was one of the elementary students I taught at LBridge, in 2009. I remember thinking the same thing about her then: a kind of stealth intellectual, under a facade of lazy, dumb teenager.
I asked her why she pretended to have lower ability in English than she really did. I can't remember exactly how I phrased the question, but this is a level of discourse that most students nominally at her level wouldn't even understand, in English. She just shrugged, and said "It's easier."
Following a hunch, I asked, "You understand everything I say, but you pretend not to?"
"That's right." She grinned sheepishly and sauntered away.
Sigh.