Marking a Five-Mark Thuziek Answer Without Rewarding Length
You teach First Language Hmar to Class X at a high school in Cachar district, Assam. The half-yearly paper is set on the HSLC pattern: three hours, 100 marks, Section A (Thuziek / Prose) carrying 25 marks - five 2-mark questions and three 5-mark questions. The prescribed prose lesson is a first-person account by a writer who returns to his village after twenty years in a city; its final sentence is very short, and its title is a single noun that can be read two ways. One 5-mark question asks candidates to explain the double meaning of the title and support it from the text.
Renthlei's answer runs to 130 words. He retells the plot accurately, explains one meaning of the title, quotes one line as evidence, and adds two sentences about a flood that hit his own village in 1967, as described by his grandmother. He never mentions the last sentence and never offers a second meaning. You have 42 scripts and one afternoon.
1. Award Renthlei a mark out of 5 and show the split you used.
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Award 3 out of 5. The question makes three demands: two meanings of the title (2 marks), textual support for each (2 marks), and one sentence tying the two meanings to the writer's purpose (1 mark). Renthlei supplies one meaning with one quotation - that is 1 + 1. Because he finds no second meaning, the remaining two support marks cannot be earned, and he never reaches the last sentence, which is where the second meaning is anchored. The plot summary earns nothing directly but should not be penalised: it is evidence he read the text and it keeps the answer readable. Do not award marks for effort or length. A 5-mark answer here should run 70–90 words; his 130 words produced one idea, which is the fact the mark records.
2. What do you do with the two sentences about the 1967 flood?
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Neither credit nor penalise. The scheme rewards what the question asks, and a flood in his own village cannot be evidence from the prescribed text, so it earns no mark. But it is not an error and not copied, and it shows he reads the lesson as being about a real place - the right instinct in the wrong place. The practical move is to write 'not from the text - see me' in the margin instead of a cross, and to use it in class: ask him what the writer's village and his own have in common, then push him back to the final sentence. What you must not do is let the extra material lift the mark to 4. That teaches the class that local colour and length beat answering the question, and the board examiner will not reward either.
3. Write the two-sentence comment you will put on his script.
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Example: 'You have found one meaning of the title and supported it well with a line from the text. Now read the last sentence again - what second meaning does it give the title, and which line proves it?' The reasoning behind the wording: it names the achievement so the mark is not a mystery, it points at a specific place in the text rather than saying 'develop your answer', and it turns the missing marks into a task he can complete in two minutes. Avoid 'good but incomplete' - it is true and useless, because it tells him nothing he can act on before the next test.