Checking a prosodic claim against the stanza in front of you
A candidate submits a 180-word appreciation of the following eight-line stanza, which appears on the question paper:
The lamp is out, the lane is wet, The watchman's stick taps once, then stops; A shutter bangs; the dogs forget; Rain combs the tin of corner shops. No letter comes. The postman's round Is four doors done and twelve to go. I fold the sheet without a sound And set the kettle, soft and slow.
The candidate writes: "The poem is in iambic pentameter and rhymes ABAB throughout, which makes it calm. The line 'Rain combs the tin' is a simile. The last two lines show the poet is happy." The question is worth 4 marks: 2 for prosodic accuracy, 1 for identifying and naming one figure of speech correctly, and 1 for a supported reading of mood. You have already decided not to penalise the candidate's handwriting. Enter your marks and marginal comments.
1. Test the claim "iambic pentameter... rhymes ABAB throughout" against the stanza. How many of the 2 prosody marks do you award, and why?
Read the worked answer
Syllables: every line runs to eight. Line 1: The/lamp/is/out/the/lane/is/wet = 8. Line 6: Is/four/doors/done/and/twelve/to/go = 8. Line 8: And/set/the/ket/tle/soft/and/slow = 8. The norm is the octosyllabic line, not the ten-syllable pentameter line, so the first half of the claim is wrong.
Rhyme: line-end words are wet / stops / forget / shops (ABAB), then round / go / sound / slow (CDCD). The stanza is two quatrains with new rhyme sounds in the second, not "ABAB throughout".
Mark: 0/2. Both halves of a claim offered as prosodic description are false. A lenient marker might give 1 for the correct ABAB observation over lines 1–4, but that would reward a half-truth stated as a whole, and the candidate would never learn that the second quatrain resets the rhyme. Comment: "Count one line before you name a metre - eight syllables here, not ten. Mark the rhyme at every line end: ABAB then CDCD."
2. Assess the figure-of-speech claim and the mood claim. Award the remaining 2 marks and supply a better two-sentence reading of mood.
Read the worked answer
"Rain combs the tin" is a simile - 0/1. A simile requires like or as. Here a verb belonging to human grooming is applied to rain, which is metaphor (or personification, if you argue the rain is given agency). The candidate could have earned the mark by naming metaphor, so this is an error of terminology, not a failure to notice the image.
"The last two lines show the poet is happy" - 0/1. No evidence is offered, and the reading goes against the grain of the stanza: an absent letter, a postman still twelve doors away, the speaker folding a sheet "without a sound".
A two-sentence model that would earn the mark: "The flat, end-stopped lines and the small unfinished routines - the postman with twelve doors to go, the kettle set 'soft and slow' - produce resignation rather than happiness. Absence is felt in what the speaker does instead of what she says." Note the structure: name a feature of the writing, then show what it does to the reader.
3. Write the single instruction to this candidate that would most improve their next appreciation, in no more than 30 words.
Read the worked answer
"Before naming a metre, count syllables in one line; before naming a figure, check for 'like' or 'as'; before naming a mood, quote the words that produce it." (28 words)
Why this and not "read more carefully": the three failures in this script are all failures of verification rather than of sensitivity. The candidate has noticed the rain image and has a feeling about the ending; what is missing is a check between impression and text. An instruction phrased as three checkable actions is usable in the exam hall; an instruction phrased as an attitude is not. If you have space for a second line, add: "One claim, one piece of evidence, in that order."