Originally Posted by
thing
I find it difficult to write positive comments. I'm not an instructor by the way but I do write school reports. The students who are doing well usually get something like 'John has had an excellent year. He has an admirable work ethos and his enthusiasm for the subject shines through.'
The duffers on the other hand get at least a page of A4. What do you write about someone who has no problem with a subject and enjoys it? I always feel like I'm short changing both student and parents but there you go.
Edit: Of course you're not allowed to write anything really critical, you have to do the good/bad/good sandwich.
I still have all of my school reports from the sixties, report writing them was the refined art of making a student squirm under the attack of a short sentence. My favourite was the one I had for maths in my first year at Grammar. One word, 'Abysmal.' In later life I studied astrophysics...
Interesting - I don't do much university teaching now, but do still mark some assignments each year.
I find the toughest to give meaningful feedback those which are "okay". Excellent assignments you can talk about what makes them so good, and those with significant deficiencies there's plenty to get my teeth into. But anything between A- and C+, I always find it a struggle to say much when performance is neither particularly good or particularly bad.
G