One of the things we must do at my English academy is write end-of-semester comments about all of our students. One of the rules about these comments is that we can’t write anything too bad about even our worst students. Why? Because we’re not as much a school as we are a business, and as a business, we need to make our customers happy.

We don’t like to call it lying; instead we call it things like “sugarcoating,” “stretching the truth,” “putting a positive spin on things” and “being creative.” Now, personally, I hate doing this, but as a defense mechanism, I’ve chosen to view it as a form of artistry. Thus, allow me to introduce you to ‘The Art of Writing About Your Bad Students.’

The first thing you need to know is how to sandwich like a pro. This is probably something that’s familiar, and maybe even natural, because Americans do this all the time. It’s simple. Start with a good comment. Put your bad comment in the middle. Top it off with another good comment. That way, you’ve hopefully left them with a good or hopeful impression, and they won’t linger on your criticism too much.

Here we have to take things a step further. One trick is to essentially say positive things, but use a lot of qualifiers. Things like ‘nearly,’ ‘almost always,’ ‘pretty,’ and ‘quite.’ You just sneak them in there, and you can kind of say something negative without anyone but a native English speaker really getting the whole picture. If you’re getting tired of qualifiers, throw in a few soft negatives. These allow you to criticize your students without it coming off as too harsh. A student is “competent” if you can get him, come hell or high water, to get their work done by the end of class. A student is “distracted” if you constantly have to call her out for chatting or not paying attention to the lesson. A student can have “potential” even if you question how well he or she will live up to it. 

Then as a general obfuscation strategy, you can throw in idioms and phrases. The ones I’ve found myself using most frequently are “carried away,” “channel his/her energies,” and “up to par,” but the possibilities are nearly endless.

My favorite, however, is something I like to call the “false positive.” The “false positive” is when you take something negative, apply all of your creative juices to it, and end up with something that actually is positive, and can sometimes sound almost glowing unless someone knows that your student is actually awful or unless they can see all of your other comments to gauge how you talk about actual good students.

For example:
Your student is constantly out of his seat. –> He’s energetic.
Your student is loud and annoyingly talkative. –> She has a lively personality.
Your student shouts and yells a lot in class. –> He has a clear speaking voice that projects well.
Your student gets upset and sulks when she gets points taken away or loses a game. –> She’s passionate.
Your student makes the same irritating joke everyday. –> He has a unique sense of humor.
Your student’s work is kind of all over the place. –> She is creative.

For example:
Andy is an energetic student with a lively personality. He has a speaking voice that projects very well, and his writing can be very creative at times. While Andy can sometimes get distracted, when he does focus he is competent and completes his work. If Andy can channel his energy toward his studies in the future, I think he has the potential to do quite well.

Have I earned my honorary M.F.A. in B.S.?

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