The Moral Answer to a Character Question
You are teaching the prose section of the Class X First Language English course. The current chapter concerns an elderly brass-worker in a small town who refuses a factory owner's offer of a salaried job; the chapter ends with him teaching his grandson to hammer a bowl. A 5-mark question asks: 'Why does the brass-worker refuse the factory owner's offer? Answer in about 80 words.' Your mark scheme awards one mark each for three textual points - pride in handwork, fear of becoming an anonymous employee, and loyalty to his father's workshop - and two marks for coherent expression with at least one quotation or close reference. Of 44 scripts, 19 answer only 'He was honest and loved his country', 12 give one textual point, 9 give two, and 4 give three. Several students ask why 'honest' does not count. You have one 40-minute period before the next test.
1. Mark these two answers against the scheme: (A) 'He refused because he was a simple, honest man who did not want money. He loved his country and its traditions.' (B) 'He refused because in the factory he would be one worker among many, not the maker of the whole bowl. He says his father's tools "knew his hands".'
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Answer A: 0/5. There is no textual point from the scheme, no reference to an event, object or line in the chapter, and 'honest' and 'loved his country' are character judgements that could be applied to almost any refusal. The sentences are clear, but the expression marks are conditional on a close reference, which is absent. Answer B: 5/5. It gives the anonymity point ('one worker among many'), the craft point ('maker of the whole bowl'), an implicit loyalty point through the father's tools, and an accurate short quotation. The expression is coherent and the quotation is integrated rather than pasted on.
The zero on A is not a punishment for simple language; it records that the answer does not answer this question about this character's motives.
2. Explain in two sentences why 'honest' is not an acceptable substitute for the three points.
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'Honest' is a general character label, not a motive: it could explain a refusal to lie but not a refusal of a salaried job, and it does not tell us what the worker would lose by accepting. A motive has to connect to something in the chapter - the bowl he makes whole, the factory floor where he would be one of many, the tools his father used - so the examiner can see the reason in the text rather than in a moral summary.
3. Rewrite the question so that it demands textual evidence and reduces moral summary, without changing the mark scheme.
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Rewritten question: 'The brass-worker refuses the factory owner's offer. Explain three reasons for his refusal, using one short quotation or close reference to support each reason. Answer in about 80 words.'
The rewrite makes the three-point structure visible, so students cannot substitute a single moral adjective for three reasons, and it makes evidence compulsory. It does not change the mark allocation: three content marks for the three reasons, two expression marks for coherence and the quality of the references. In the 40-minute period, spend ten minutes on the rewritten question with the 19 scripts that scored 0, asking them to find one object in the chapter that explains a reason, then build the sentence from the object outwards.