Students talk with teachers about disappointing grades for different reasons, and the way students frame such interactions has consequences for how those interactions are likely to unfold. To explore students' primary goals in such interactions, 234 undergraduates reported on a recent conversation with an instructor about a lower-than-desired grade. Three different primary goals (learning, persuading, and fighting) initially were postulated, and a fourth (impressing) emerged from students' responses. Differences in students' primary goals for talking with their instructors were related to the attributions that they made for the low grade as well as to different face-threatening acts and politeness strategies they enacted during the interaction with their instructor. Findings illustrate how the primary goal framework can be extended into the instructional communication context, reveal that primary goals are not necessarily instrumental, and suggest that instructors would benefit from learning how to diagnose and negotiate with students about primary goals.