Genuine, specific praise

In my experience, delivering specific praise produces students who better listen to their teacher's corrections later.

It doesn't come naturally for most, but specific praise can become a habit. Teachers and parents just have to practice doing it! Did your student just play through a review piece? It probably wasn't perfect! Try hard to recall what they did well and compliment THAT.

Your student may be obsessed about a low 2nd finger they forgot, so if you say, "good job", back it up with a reason. Otherwise, they may be hearing in their head, "I'm sure you did your best even though you failed". Or, they may assume you don't pay attention to detail, and disregard your praise in the future.

An example of specific praise would be, "I'm so proud of you for playing that whole piece from memory! I know you had a couple of hiccups along the way, but we can go back and fix those now. Great job!"