Reading: When a Correct True/False Answer Has the Wrong Justification
During a mock PAU reading paper, a candidate reads a short article about urban beekeeping in a city council. The relevant sentence is: 'Although the council paid for the first twelve hives in 2021, it now expects the beekeepers' cooperative to cover half of the annual maintenance bill.' The true/false statement is: 'The council has stopped giving any money to the apiaries.' The candidate writes 'False' and justifies it with the quotation: 'the council paid for the first twelve hives in 2021.' The marking notes say the justification must show why the statement is false, using information from the text, and may be a quotation or paraphrase of 5–20 words. The candidate's answer is otherwise neat and within the time limit. The teacher has to decide whether to award full credit, partial credit, or no credit for the justification, and what feedback to give before the next mock.
1. How should the teacher mark the candidate's justification? Decide between full credit, partial credit and no credit, and explain the decision with reference to the statement and the quotation.
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Decision: Correct true/false mark, but no full credit for the justification.
The statement is about the present: the council has stopped giving any money. The quotation proves only past funding: the council paid for twelve hives in 2021. That is fully compatible with the council still paying half of the maintenance bill today, so the quotation does not establish that the statement is false. If the grid separates the T/F mark from the justification mark, award the T/F mark and give no justification mark; if the grid allows partial credit for relevant but insufficient evidence, give at most half. The candidate has found a true detail, but not the contrastive detail ('now expects ... to cover half') that answers the statement.
2. Write a replacement justification of 5–20 words that would receive full credit, and state why it works.
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Model: It now expects the cooperative to cover half of the maintenance bill. (13 words)
Why it works: 'Now' signals the current arrangement, and 'half' implies that the council still covers the other half. That directly contradicts 'stopped giving any money'. The answer is a close paraphrase rather than a long quotation, so it stays inside the 5–20-word limit and shows the examiner the logical link between text and statement.
3. What single feedback point should the teacher emphasise to reduce this error in future? Justify it.
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Emphasise time reference and claim focus, not 'quote more'. The candidate's error is local: they matched a keyword ('council', 'money') without checking whether the statement was about past, present or future. A useful routine is: underline the time expression in the statement; find the text span with the same time frame; ask 'does this prove the statement, or only a related fact?' The teacher can model this with the phrase 'now expects' and the question 'does this prove no money at all?' This is more transferable than telling the candidate to copy longer stretches of text.