All “excellent question” usually means is they either know the answer or have heard the question asked before or have asked it themselves.
A good novel question that catches them off guard likely won’t get this response, but it may still be a really interesting question.
“Excellent question” usually means one of two things. It either was the exact question the teacher had prepared for in their lessonplan, or it was genuinely a good question, meaning it was a question like you described, or something extra curicular, or scheduled for the next lesson or simply something the teacher forgot to include in the lesson and therefor your question helped them.
All “excellent question” usually means is they either know the answer or have heard the question asked before or have asked it themselves. A good novel question that catches them off guard likely won’t get this response, but it may still be a really interesting question.
People say this ALL the time when they’re stalling for time.
“Excellent question” usually means one of two things. It either was the exact question the teacher had prepared for in their lessonplan, or it was genuinely a good question, meaning it was a question like you described, or something extra curicular, or scheduled for the next lesson or simply something the teacher forgot to include in the lesson and therefor your question helped them.