Two Readings of an Unseen Passage: Admiration or Mockery?
An unseen-passage item in the Alternative English paper carries an original passage of about sixty words: 'The new digital hub was inaugurated on Monday. A brass plate beside the door lists eleven dignitaries. Inside, four computers wait under dust sheets, their cables coiled like sleeping snakes. In the corridor, a notice declares that the village is now connected. The nearest working internet point is nine kilometres away, in a chemist's shop that also sells photocopies.' Question 4(b), worth 3 marks, reads: 'What is the writer's attitude towards the digital hub? Support your answer with one detail from the passage.' Two responses are collected. Response A: 'The writer admires the digital hub because it shows the village is progressing; eleven dignitaries attended and the notice says the village is now connected.' Response B: 'The writer is gently mocking: the dust sheets and coiled cables show the computers are unused, and the claim of being connected is undercut by the nine-kilometre walk to a working connection.' The head of department argues that both should get full marks because both are supported from the passage.
1. Which response should receive full marks, and which marking principle decides the issue?
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Response B. The deciding principle is that an inference item asks for the attitude the writer conveys, and the value of a supporting detail is whether it functions as evidence for that attitude, not whether it is quoted accurately from the text.
Response B does three things: it names an attitude ('gently mocking'), it cites details that actually carry the ironic charge (dust sheets, coiled cables, the nine-kilometre distance), and it explicitly links the contradiction between the notice and the reality. That is inference from textual cues.
Response A quotes the text accurately but treats the notice's claim as the writer's claim. Its 'evidence' comes entirely from the side of the passage the writer is quietly exposing. It is not an unsupported answer, but it is a literal reading that has not noticed the gap between what the village declares and what the passage shows. The head of department's rule ('both are supported, so both get full marks') confuses presence of quotation with quality of evidence; examiners credit the selection and use of evidence, not its mere presence.
2. Award a mark out of 3 to Response A, justify the placement, and write a feedback comment of about 40 words.
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1 out of 3. Reward what is genuinely there: correct identification of the topic and accurate quotation, which earns the lowest band. Withhold the remaining marks because the attitude is misread, and because the quoted details support the opposite of the claim being made. Marking at 2 would signal that misreading tone costs almost nothing, which is the very skill the item tests.
Feedback: 'You quote accurately, but you have taken the notice at face value. Ask why the writer mentions dust sheets and a nine-kilometre walk. Those details pull against the word "connected". Name the attitude they create, then choose your quotation.'
The comment identifies the error, points to the specific cues, and tells the student what to do differently, rather than simply asserting that the answer is wrong.
3. A third student writes: 'The writer is angry about the wasted money.' How should this be judged, and what does the decision reveal about marking attitude and tone?
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It should not receive full marks, but it is not worthless. The student has sensed that the passage is critical, which is a real gain over Response A, so some credit is due if a cue is offered. The problem is degree, not direction. An attitude question asks for the writer's stance at the strength the text supports, and this passage works by dry juxtaposition: a brass plate, dust sheets, a notice, a distance. There is no emotive diction, no accusation, no exclamation. 'Angry' overstates, and an examiner must be willing to say so.
Award 1, or 2 only if the student supports the claim with a specific cue and acknowledges that the tone is restrained rather than furious. The wider point is that attitude is marked on a scale, not as a binary right or wrong; 'mocking', 'wry', 'critical' and 'disappointed' are all defensible here, while 'angry' and 'admiring' are not, and the mark follows the calibration between the word chosen and the evidence offered.