ASSEB HSLC Elective Santhali common mistakes
ASSEB HSLC Elective Santhali · Understand the traps and how to avoid them.
When answering an unseen Santhali prose passage, the candidate lifts whole sentences from the passage as the answer instead of restating the idea in their own words, so marks are lost on 'own words' questions and on inference questions where the passage never states the answer directly.
Under time pressure, copying feels safe because the words are guaranteed to be in Santhali and grammatically correct. Candidates also fear that paraphrasing will introduce grammar errors, so they avoid rewording. Many have practised only literal 'wh' questions and have never been trained to convert first-person or quoted statements into reported Santhali.
What to do instead
Practise a two-step routine on every practice passage: first underline the exact line that carries the clue, then close the passage and write the answer from memory in one or two sentences. For inference questions, use fixed frames such as 'Lekhak kahan hai je…' or 'Ihã se bujha jay je…' so the answer is visibly your own wording. Compare your sentence with the source line and check that no run of more than four words is identical.
The candidate answers unseen-passage questions about tone, purpose or the writer's attitude by choosing the option or wording that matches the topic of the passage rather than its stance, e.g. marking a critical passage as 'praise' because the subject is a respected figure.
Candidates read for content words only and skip evaluative markers - Santhali hedges, negatives, contrast particles and emotive adjectives. School practice rarely isolates 'attitude' questions, so the skill of scanning for stance is undeveloped.
What to do instead
Before answering, circle every contrast or negation word in the relevant paragraph (for example words meaning 'but', 'however', 'not', 'only', 'merely') and every evaluative adjective. Decide stance from those markers alone, then read the options. Build a personal list of ten Santhali stance words (praise, blame, doubt, warning, request) with one example sentence each and revise it weekly.
In poetry questions the candidate retells the poem's story in prose and stops there, without naming the figure of speech, without explaining the comparison, and without linking the device to the effect it creates.
Poetry is taught in class mainly as content to be memorised, so the candidate knows what happens in the poem but has never practised the three-part answer structure. Terms such as upma, rupak and anupras are recognised in a list but not applied to lines.
What to do instead
Use a fixed three-sentence template for every device question: name the device, quote the exact words from the line, then state what is compared with what and what feeling or image it produces. Drill this on five short lines per session. Keep a device table with columns: device name, definition in Santhali, one example from each prescribed poem, and the effect.
The candidate confuses the poet with the speaker of the poem, writing 'the poet says he is a farmer' when the poem uses a persona, and similarly mixes up characters in prescribed prose when summarising a story.
Prescribed texts are often memorised as biography plus plot, and the distinction between author, narrator and character is never made explicit in revision notes. The candidate therefore answers 'who says this' questions from memory of the poet's life rather than from the text.
What to do instead
For each prescribed poem and prose piece, make a three-column card: author facts (dates, region, other works), speaker/narrator identity, and characters with one-line roles. When a question quotes a line, first ask 'who is speaking inside the text?' and write the answer as the speaker, not the author. Test yourself by covering the author column and reciting only what the text itself shows.
On prescribed-poetry appreciation questions, the candidate gives a general moral summary ('the poem teaches us to love nature') instead of locating the specific line, image or device the question asks about, and cannot quote accurately from memory.
Revision is done by reading notes rather than by re-reading the poems, so exact wording fades and the candidate substitutes a safe general statement. Marking schemes reward textual reference, but candidates do not know this.
What to do instead
Re-read each prescribed poem aloud twice a week and memorise two key lines per poem verbatim. For every appreciation question, force yourself to include one short quotation and one line reference before any general comment. Practise writing answers that begin with the quoted words, then explain, then generalise - never the reverse.
The candidate applies sandhi and samas rules mechanically by joining or splitting words without checking which rule applies, producing forms such as a vowel coalescence where the grammar requires a consonant glide, or labelling any compound as the same samas type.
Sandhi and samas are learned as lists of examples rather than as decision procedures, and the terminology overlaps in the candidate's mind. Under exam pressure the candidate reproduces the nearest memorised example instead of analysing the actual word.
What to do instead
Build a decision chart: first identify the final sound of the first element and the initial sound of the second, then select the rule, then write the result. For samas, ask what relationship the first element bears to the second (qualifier, case relation, negation, coordination) and name the type from that relationship. Do twenty split-and-join items daily and mark each with the rule name, not just the answer.
In karak and verb-form questions, the candidate selects the case marker by translating the English sentence word for word, and conjugates verbs by analogy with a familiar verb without checking person, number, tense or aspect.
Bilingual candidates mentally translate from the dominant language, whose case and tense system differs, so the Santhali marker is chosen by meaning rather than by the verb's argument structure. Verb paradigms are memorised partially, usually only in the third person.
What to do instead
Practise karak by identifying the verb first and asking which participant it requires, then assigning the marker. For verbs, recite full paradigms aloud for one verb per day across all persons and both numbers, and write five original sentences using non-third-person forms. In the exam, say the whole paradigm silently before choosing an option.
In sentence-transformation items (active to passive, direct to reported speech, affirmative to negative, simple to complex), the candidate changes the words but leaves the tense, person or honorific agreement unchanged, or drops the quotation marker when converting direct speech.
Transformation is treated as a vocabulary swap rather than a structural operation with ordered steps, and the candidate has not internalised the tense-backshift and pronoun-change tables.
What to do instead
Use a fixed four-step checklist for each transformation type and write it at the top of your rough sheet: (1) identify the operator and tense, (2) shift tense and pronouns per the table, (3) adjust time and place words, (4) check agreement and honorifics. Do ten items of one type in a single sitting so the steps become automatic, then mix types.
In the essay, the candidate writes a long general introduction and runs out of time, leaving the body underdeveloped and the conclusion missing; in letters and applied writing, the candidate omits the formal elements (sender's address, date, salutation, subject line, closing) or uses informal register in a formal letter.
Candidates draft in their heads while writing, with no time budget and no plan. Formal-letter format is often memorised as a blurred whole rather than as an ordered checklist, and register is not consciously controlled.
What to do instead
Spend the first three minutes on a skeleton: five bullet points for an essay (thesis, three supporting points, conclusion) or the full format frame for a letter. Allocate fixed minutes to plan, write and check. Memorise one formal-letter frame and one application frame as blanks to fill, and practise writing each from memory in under ten minutes until the layout is automatic.
On vocabulary and rapid-reading items, the candidate guesses idioms from the literal meaning of their component words, and picks synonyms or antonyms by sound similarity or by the first option that looks familiar rather than by meaning in context.
Idioms are figurative and cannot be decoded word by word, but candidates have usually memorised only the idiom's general sense, not a usage sentence. Synonym items are answered from a mental word list without inserting the candidate word back into the sentence to test it.
What to do instead
Keep an idiom notebook with three columns: idiom, literal gloss, and one original sentence showing its figurative use. For synonym and antonym items, always substitute the chosen word into the original sentence and read it back; eliminate options that change the sentence's meaning or register. Revise ten idioms and ten word pairs every two days with self-testing, not re-reading.