Allocating Marks When a Set-Text Question Asks for Both Recall and Analysis
An external examination question on a prescribed set text is worth 10 marks and reads: 'Explain how the author uses word order and sound to create tension at this point in the narrative, and evaluate how effective the technique is.' A student writes four sentences: two accurately identify the key hyperbaton and the repeated sibilants with correct Latin quotation; one describes the narrative context accurately; and one asserts that the effect is 'very effective and dramatic' without further support. The question's marking guide allocates 4 marks to identification of techniques with evidence, 4 marks to analysis of effect, and 2 marks to evaluation.
1. Allocate the marks and justify the allocation against the three-part guide.
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Identification (4 marks): The student quotes the hyperbaton and the sibilants correctly and names both techniques. This is secure: award 4.
Analysis of effect (4 marks): The student describes context but does not connect the techniques to tension. There is no statement of how the delayed word creates suspense, or how the repeated sibilants slow or hiss. Context alone is not analysis. Award 1, recognising that the context is accurate and relevant but not yet doing analytical work.
Evaluation (2 marks): 'Very effective and dramatic' is an assertion with no criterion. Evaluation requires a judgement tied to the author's purpose and weighed against an alternative. Award 0, or at most 1 if the guide permits credit for a stated judgement even when unsupported; the safer reading is 0, since the guide asks for evaluation, not opinion.
Total: 5/10. The distribution matters: the student has done the easy half well and the demanding half barely. A marker who awarded 7 by treating the assertion as analysis would inflate the top of the range and make the question unable to discriminate.
2. The student appeals, arguing that the two correct quotations should carry more weight because they prove close reading. Respond to the argument using the structure of the marking guide.
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Close reading is genuinely demonstrated, and the 4 identification marks already reward it in full. The appeal asks for those marks to count twice, once as evidence and again as analysis.
The guide separates the operations deliberately: finding a technique is a different skill from explaining how it produces an effect, which is different again from judging whether it succeeds. Quotation proves the first; it cannot substitute for the second, because analysis requires a causal claim (delayed word withholds the object, so the reader waits) that the student never makes. If quotations earned analysis marks, a student could score highly by listing devices without ever explaining them, and the question would no longer test the stated outcome.
The fair response is to show the student the guide, point to the missing causal sentences, and note that the evaluation mark was also available and unearned. The mark stands. Feedback should model one analytical sentence and one evaluative sentence so the gap is concrete rather than punitive.