Otherwise, good luck patterns of use associated with good in teacher feedback

This paper presents a corpus-based study of the use of the evaluative adjective good in teacher written feedback. It examines the use of good in recurrent patterns related to lexical choice, syntax and discourse functions. Our findings suggest that the use of good is highly formulaic, and is often part of praise, encouragement and suggestions. When used as part of formulaic praise, good seems to perform the following functions: establishing solidarity with student writers, acknowledging face threats potentially posed by feedback, mitigating criticism and advice, and organizing discourse. When used in this way, comments containing good appear to carry minimal instructional value. Instead, the underlying meaning of good in such expressions appears to be intention to assess. When used in non-formulaic structures, good helps teachers to perform an academic gatekeeping role by introducing preferred academic practices and text features. Based on the analysis, we conclude that caution must be taken to balance formulaic use of language with specific comments in teacher feedback.