Steady evaluation gives both the parents and the kid an idea of how the kid is doing. If the kid is making positive progress, the kid would want to maintain the progress. If the kid is not making much progress, the kid would probably work hard to meet the parent’s or the teacher’s expectations. If the kid is making no progress or “under-progress”, the kid might either work very hard for a breakthrough, or to the other end, the kid might want to give up. This depends on whether the “under-progress” is due to laziness or due to ability. There should be both short term and long term evaluations. Short term evaluations could be weekly, bi-weekly, or monthly feedback. Long term evaluations could be semi-anual report, or anual report. Sometimes, parents are very responsive to instant weekly feedback and might have judged their child’s interest, abilities, or progress, too early. Weekly feedback is not really a fair evaluation of the child’s true potentials or true abilities because people might have an occasional bad day, or a busy week, etc. Weekly feedback mainly is to give the child an idea of what he/she should focus on, and to warn the students to quickly fix or eliminate any potential pitfalls before those pitfalls become a bad habit. Long term feedback, such as semi-annual, or annual feedback is more of a true picture of the student’s evaluations because it gathers the data of all the weekly feedbacks.
Similar to corporate, if a company is making satisfactory profit, this company might want to strengthen their strength and continue to upgrade any of its potential flaw to maintain the progress. If a company is making a loss, this company might want to re-evaluate whether to continue to run the business, or to seek out solutions to fix the current situation.
Similarly, if everything is going fine, the student would want to maintain the good progress. If the student is stuck due to laziness, parents might want to either inject new inspirations, new motivations, or parents might want to re-evaluate the child’s activity-portfolios.
Since learning a musical instrument is a long term investment, if resources is adequate, it might be a good idea to let the child to expose to, and to try different forms of performances, to find their own voices before shutting the opportunity because knowing how to play a musical instrument is a life-long enjoyment.
Please also see Ten Tips to Motivate Your Child to Practice
[...] 2. Reward 3. Negative Reinforcement 4. Punishment 5. Performance Opportunities 6. Exposure 7. Steady Evaluation 8. Understand the purpose of doing such practice 9. Knowing the historical background/context of the [...]