The Notice That Became a Report
Your Class X student Rina was asked in the half-yearly examination to write a notice for the school noticeboard about an inter-house debate. The instruction was 50 words, 5 marks, with format 1, content 2 and expression 2. She submitted 118 words in three paragraphs, beginning 'Dear students', under the headline 'INTER-HOUSE DEBATE HELD', and wrote in the past tense: 'The debate was held on 14 August in the Assembly Hall at 9 a.m. Students registered with their class teachers by 10 August.' The facts are correct. She included rhetorical questions ('Are we not proud of our speakers?') and signed off 'Yours sincerely, Rina'. You must mark the script and return it tomorrow, and the department head has asked that no student's work be rewritten for them. This is the first notice-writing task of the year.
1. Award the 5 marks across format, content and expression, and justify each deduction against the rubric.
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Format: 0/1. A notice needs the word NOTICE, a date line and an issuing authority (Head Girl, Cultural Secretary, Principal). Rina has none of these, and she uses a letter salutation and subscription, which belong to a different genre. Content: 2/2. The facts are all correct - 14 August, Assembly Hall, 9 a.m., registration by 10 August with class teachers. Expression: 1/2. Her sentences are controlled, but the piece is 118 words against a 50-word limit, and the past tense, headline and rhetorical questions are report features, not notice features. Total: 3/5.
The deduction is not for length alone; it is for the genre signals. A notice is a short, impersonal, forward-looking announcement; a report is a past-tense account of something that has already happened. Rina has written the report of the debate instead of the notice announcing it, so the format and expression marks are where the loss belongs.
2. Write the model notice Rina should compare against, in 50 words or fewer.
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NOTICE INTER-HOUSE DEBATE 14 August The inter-house debate will be held on 14 August at 9 a.m. in the Assembly Hall. Students wishing to participate must register with their class teachers by 10 August. Head Girl
The model is 42 words. It keeps the four facts, uses future tense, omits any salutation, and carries a date and an issuing authority. Showing it beside Rina's script makes the contrast visible without rewriting her work: her facts survive, her frame does not.
3. Write the three-sentence feedback you would give Rina that names the genre difference without rewriting her work.
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"Your facts are all correct, which is why the content marks are full. The problem is the frame: a notice is pinned up before an event, so it uses future or present tense and carries a date and an issuing authority, not 'Dear students' or 'Yours sincerely'. Your past tense and headline describe an event that has already happened - that is a report, and a report is a different task."
The feedback names the criterion, quotes Rina's own signals, and stops short of supplying a corrected text. That keeps the department head's rule and gives her something to act on in the next task.