Teachers and Feedback

Questions and model answers

1. When someone gives you feedback on your work, what do you usually do with it?

   Nothing, for a day. I used to respond immediately, and everything I wrote back was defensive even when I didn't mean it to be. Now I read it, close it, and come back the next morning, when the same comments read completely differently — less like an attack, more like someone pointing at a thing. The words haven't changed; I have. Then I sort it into two piles: what they noticed, and what they suggested. The first pile is almost always right, because if a reader was confused, they were confused. The second pile I take much less seriously — people are good at spotting problems and unreliable at prescribing fixes. That distinction has saved me from a lot of bad rewrites.

2. Would you rather have a teacher who's demanding or one who's encouraging?

   Demanding, provided they're specific about it. A teacher who just expects more without saying what more looks like is only stressful. But someone who tells me exactly where the work falls short is doing something no encouragement can — encouragement makes me feel better about work that hasn't changed. I had one teacher who wrote almost nothing positive on anything, and that class is the only one where I can still see my improvement in the drafts. I kept them, which I've never done for any other class. That said, demanding only works if you believe the person wants you to succeed. The same comment from someone indifferent just reads as contempt, and then you stop showing them anything real.

3. Tell me about a piece of feedback that changed how you did something.

   A tutor once wrote "you're explaining, not arguing" on an essay, and I didn't understand it for about a week. It was five words with no explanation underneath. I'd assumed a good essay showed you'd understood the material. What she meant was that I'd summarized four positions and never said which one I thought was right — I was reporting a conversation instead of joining it. Once I saw it I couldn't stop seeing it. Almost everything I'd written was a tour of other people's opinions with me as the guide. The next essay was worse in some ways, because taking a position exposes you. But it was the first one that had anything of mine in it.

4. Do you think a good teacher matters more than a good textbook?

   For most things, yes — but the gap is narrowing and I think that's worth admitting. A textbook can't tell you which of your mistakes is the one worth fixing first, and that's most of what a good teacher does. They watch you work and intervene at the right moment, which no book can. But for straightforward material — grammar rules, formulas, anything with one correct answer — a well-made book plus a decent explanation online gets you most of the way, and it's available at two in the morning. So I'd narrow the claim. A good teacher matters more when the thing being learned is judgment rather than information. The trouble is that most classes still spend their time on the information.

The Korean translation, the expression breakdowns, the reusable frames and the common-mistake notes for these four questions are in the book. The recording and this transcript are free, here and on YouTube.