“My praise doesn’t seem to land”

Praise that names no action gives a student nothing to repeat. "Brilliant work" says you are pleased, but not what earned it, so it cannot shape what happens tomorrow. Praise for being clever quietly raises the price of the next mistake, because a wrong answer would put the label in doubt. Public praise costs some students standing with their peers, so the shrug can be self-protection. Nobody is being ungrateful here. Students want your approval; they have simply learned to check what it is worth.

The habit holds because praising is quick and feels kind, and because it never reports its own failure: a shrug sends no data back. Vague praise also does quieter jobs, filling a pause or cushioning a correction, so it rarely gets questioned. Making it land again means changing what your words carry, and the techniques below do that at two moments: one sharpens the praise itself, naming the exact action and choosing public or private on purpose; the other moves your words ahead of the behaviour, describing what you want to see next instead of the failure just gone.