The Notice That Said Tomorrow
On Monday, the Headmaster announces in assembly: 'The Unit Test will begin tomorrow at 9:30 a.m. Bring your admit cards to Room 4. Students who arrive after 9:45 will not be allowed to enter.' A student volunteer must put this on the class notice board on Tuesday morning. The notice will be read by students who were absent from assembly. The volunteer's draft says: 'The Headmaster said that the Unit Test will begin tomorrow at 9:30 a.m. Bring your admit cards to Room 4. Students who arrive after 9:45 will not be allowed to enter.' The volunteer is unsure whether to keep the reporting verb, change 'tomorrow', or rewrite the whole message as a direct notice. The class teacher wants no ambiguity about the day and no change to the rules. You have to choose the best form for the audience and explain the time reference clearly.
1. Identify two problems in the volunteer's draft and explain why each matters for a reader who was absent from assembly.
Read the worked answer
First, tomorrow is wrong or ambiguous. The Headmaster said it on Monday, so tomorrow meant Tuesday. The notice is posted on Tuesday morning, when tomorrow would mean Wednesday. An absent student could arrive a day late. Second, the draft mixes reported speech and direct speech: The Headmaster said that ... is followed by Bring your admit cards and Students who arrive ..., which are direct commands and statements. In reported speech, the command should become to bring and the pronoun should shift to their; as written, the grammar is inconsistent. A third, smaller problem is that The Headmaster said that is unnecessary on a notice board. The notice should give the instruction directly, not report who said it.
2. Rewrite the message as a notice for Tuesday morning. Keep all rules unchanged and make the day unambiguous without inventing a date.
Read the worked answer
NOTICE
The Unit Test begins today at 9:30 a.m. in Room 4. Students must bring their admit cards. Students who arrive after 9:45 a.m. will not be allowed to enter.
Reasoning: today is correct because the notice is posted on Tuesday morning and the test is on Tuesday. I avoid tomorrow, which would point to Wednesday. Students must bring their admit cards converts the original command into a clear notice instruction. their replaces your because the notice speaks about students, not to one reader. Room 4 and the 9:45 cutoff are unchanged. I do not add a date because none is given; if the school wants a date, the volunteer must check it, not guess.
3. The volunteer asks whether a notice should ever use reported speech. Answer with a principle and apply it to this case.
Read the worked answer
Reported speech is useful when the purpose is to tell readers what someone said-for example, in minutes of a meeting or a news report. A notice board usually has a different purpose: to give the instruction directly to the people who must act on it. Reported speech adds a layer (The Headmaster said that ...) and forces tense, pronoun, and time changes that can create ambiguity. In this case, the reader needs the test time and rule, not the fact of the announcement. So direct notice is better. If the school wanted a record of the assembly, reported speech would be appropriate, but then the time would need to be anchored: The Headmaster announced on Monday that the test would begin the next day at 9:30 a.m.