Good morning Iain. Ok, lets look at the 'nice'. When someone says, "Karen, I love the way you teach," I never take that statement as a compliment. Why? It tells me nothing. Now if one of my participants said, 'Karen, I love how you project your voice, or your explanations on how to write objectives came across as very clear to the whole audience, or I loved the humor you injected when you gave an example of action responses, then I would take that as a compliment. An e-prime statement does not just 'rid' itself of the 'to
be' verbs, it gives clarity on the whole subject.
Going back to your 'nice'. Add to your statement so that others won't get confused as to what you specifically mean when you say 'nice'. This will automatically eliminate all the other sentences that others think. One of the biggest problems that I find with the Standard English language, people tend to use very vague words without clarifying them.