School notice: deposit, refund and the restrictive clause
Candidate: Aoife, reading section. The text is a notice from a school office: 'La gita a Ravenna è fissata per giovedì 14. Il costo è di 18 euro, comprensivo di pullman e ingressi. La caparra di 5 euro va consegnata in segreteria entro venerdì 8. In caso di maltempo la gita sarà rinviata alla settimana successiva. La quota sarà trattenuta solo se l'assenza non è giustificata. I genitori sono pregati di firmare il modulo e di consegnarlo al docente entro mercoledì 13.'
Questions: (a) True or false: 'La gita costa 18 euro in tutto.' (b) 'Cosa succede se piove?' (c) 'Se uno studente è malato e non partecipa, riavrà i soldi?'
Aoife marks (a) False, reasoning that the deposit is charged on top of the 18 euro, so the trip costs 23. For (b) she writes 'La gita è annullata.' For (c) she writes 'No, perché la quota è trattenuta.' She has a good vocabulary score but a weak score on inference items, and she tells her teacher she 'reads the sentence and picks the word that matches'.
1. Explain how a candidate should work out 'comprensivo di' and 'trattenuta' without a dictionary, and identify what Aoife did wrong.
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Both words sit in contexts that define them. 'Il costo è di 18 euro, comprensivo di pullman e ingressi': the clause names two things that would otherwise be separate expenses, so 'comprensivo di' must mean 'including'. The arithmetic confirms it - a deposit plus a total is the normal way school trips are priced, and a deposit is part of a total, not an extra charge. 'La quota sarà trattenuta solo se l'assenza non è giustificata': 'trattenuta' is what happens to money when you do not get it back, and 'solo se' narrows the condition, making retention the exception and refund the default.
Aoife's errors are both lexical guesses made without checking the clause. She reads 'comprensivo' as additional, giving 23 euro, and she reads 'trattenuta' as unconditional, ignoring both 'solo se' and 'non'. The discipline is to read to the end of the sentence before committing: in Italian notices the load is carried by short, frequent, learnable words - 'solo', 'non', 'entro', 'invece' - and those are exactly the words a word-matching reader skips.
2. Answer question (c) with the evidence you would require, and say how you would word the answer.
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Evidence chain: 'la quota sarà trattenuta solo se l'assenza non è giustificata'. Illness is an absence that can be justified - by a medical certificate or a note from a parent - so the condition for retaining the money is not met, and the fee is returned.
The answer must be two-branched, because 'solo se' produces a conditional rather than a yes/no: 'Sì, se l'assenza è giustificata (per esempio con un certificato medico); no, se non è giustificata.' A candidate who writes simply 'No' has read the verb and ignored the restrictive clause; one who writes 'Sì' has the right instinct but incomplete reasoning. In the exam the safest form is to quote the Italian fragment and then state both branches in one sentence, since that demonstrates comprehension and protects against a mark scheme that rewards the condition rather than the verdict. Note also that Aoife's error here is the same error as in (a): she treats a qualified statement as absolute.
3. What is a reliable method for true/false items containing figures and conditions?
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Three steps.
- Locate the sentence, not the topic. Underline the exact words the statement paraphrases, because a T/F statement is usually a rewriting of one clause.
- Test for a changed element: a number, a negation, a condition, or a subject. Typical traps in Italian notices are 'comprensivo / non comprensivo', 'entro venerdì 8' versus 'dopo', 'rinviata' versus 'annullata', and singular versus plural.
- If the text does not settle the statement, choose the option that says so rather than guessing from plausibility. Papers include 'non è detto nel testo' precisely to punish world knowledge.
Aoife's first answer is a changed element (a deposit treated as an extra cost); her second is a changed verb ('rinviata' read as 'annullata'); her third is a dropped condition. All three would be caught by step 2, at a cost of about ten seconds per item - much less than the marks lost.