The Unopened Envelope: Pronoun Reference in an Unseen Passage
An HSC candidate has eight minutes to answer four comprehension questions on a 120-word unseen Persian passage. The passage reads: «مینا نامه‌ای را روی میز دید. آن را برنداشت. به برادرش گفت که آن را باز نکرده است. برادرش گفت که پاکت را دیده بود، ولی نامه را نخوانده بود. مادرشان پرسید: چه کسی نامه را باز کرد؟ مینا گفت: من نکردم. برادرش ساکت ماند.» The question asks: «چه کسی نامه را باز نکرده بود؟» Options are A مینا, B برادر, C مادر, D هیچ‌کس. The candidate chooses B, writing: «برادر گفت نامه را نخوانده بود، پس باز نکرده است.» The answer key gives A. The candidate has confused نخواندن with باز نکردن and has not tracked the subject of each reported clause. The invigilator allows no dictionary.
1. Which option is correct, and which two cues in the passage settle it? Show the referent of «آن» in Mina's speech.
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The correct option is A: مینا. First cue: the question uses باز نکرده, and the only character who explicitly denies opening is Mina: «من نکردم». Second cue: the brother's clause uses نخوانده بود - he says he saw the envelope but had not read the letter. Reading and opening are different actions. The «آن» in Mina's speech refers to نامه, the letter she saw on the table. She says she did not open it; she does not say she did not read it. The brother remains silent when their mother asks who opened the letter, so his silence cannot be converted into a denial. B is a lexical trap, not a textual inference.
2. Write a 25-word explanation for a classmate who chose B, identifying the exact false equivalence.
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The false equivalence is نخواندن = باز نکردن. In Persian, خواندن means to read, while باز کردن means to open. The brother says he had seen the envelope but had not read the letter. That does not mean he had not opened it. The question asks باز نکرده, not نخوانده.
3. If the question asked «چه کسی نامه را نخوانده بود؟», what would the answer be, and what changes?
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The answer would be B: برادر, because his clause uses نخوانده بود. Mina's clause uses باز نکرده است, so it answers a different question. The lesson is that comprehension questions often turn on the exact verb inside the reported clause, not on the general topic of the passage. A candidate who matches the question verb to the passage verb avoids the trap.