Marking 'Rewrite as Directed' When Two Answers Are Both Grammatical
A teacher in Guntur is marking the grammar section of a mock paper. The instruction for every item is 'Rewrite as directed'. Four items and two students' answers:
(i) She said, 'I am going to Hyderabad tomorrow.' (Report it.) - Bhavya: She said that she was going to Hyderabad the next day. Kiran: She said that she is going to Hyderabad tomorrow.
(ii) He was tired. He finished the work. (Combine using 'although'.) - Bhavya: Although he was tired, he finished the work. Kiran: He was tired although he finished the work.
(iii) The teacher punished the boy. (Change to the passive.) - Bhavya: The boy was punished by the teacher. Kiran: The boy was punished.
(iv) If you do not hurry, you will miss the bus. (Begin with 'Unless'.) - Bhavya: Unless you hurry, you will miss the bus. Kiran: Unless you do not hurry, you will miss the bus.
The marking scheme gives one mark each and ends with the note: 'Accept any grammatically correct equivalent.' The teacher has to decide how far that note stretches.
1. Mark each item for both students, justifying every judgement, and say where the scheme's final note does and does not apply.
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Item (i) - reported speech. Bhavya 1, Kiran 0. With the reporting verb in the past ('said'), the present tense and the near-deictic 'tomorrow' must shift: was going, the next day / the following day. Kiran has shifted neither, so the sentence misreports what was said. The 'any correct equivalent' note does not rescue it - 'She said that she is going' is acceptable only when the reporting verb is present ('She says that she is going').
Item (ii) - 'although'. Bhavya 1, Kiran 0. Kiran's sentence is grammatical, which is why the note tempts an examiner to pass it, but it is not equivalent: attaching 'although' to the second clause reverses the concession - it now reads as if finishing the work were the surprising concession and being tired the main point. Note that 'He finished the work although he was tired' would be correct; the position of 'although' is free, but it must govern the concessive clause. This is a meaning error disguised as a grammar error.
Item (iii) - passive. Both 1. The by-agent is optional in English; 'The boy was punished' is a complete passive and often the more natural sentence. Here the scheme's note genuinely applies - this is the item it was written for.
Item (iv) - 'unless'. Bhavya 1, Kiran 0. 'Unless' already contains the negative ('unless' = 'if… not'), so adding 'do not' produces a double negative and inverts the meaning: Kiran's sentence now promises the bus will be missed only if the person does hurry.
Rule of thumb: the note licenses optional elements (agent, contraction, 'though' for 'although'), never changes of tense, polarity or clause function.
2. The teacher wants one board explanation that fixes item (iv) permanently. Draft it, and show the substitution test students should use.
Read the worked answer
'Unless' is a compressed 'if… not', so the verb after it stays positive:
- If you do not hurry → Unless you hurry (not 'unless you do not hurry')
- If it does not rain → Unless it rains
- If he does not apologise → Unless he apologises
Substitution test. Write the sentence out with 'if… not' in place of 'unless'. Kiran's version becomes 'If you do not do not hurry, you will miss the bus', which is visibly broken - one negative too many. Bhavya's becomes 'If you do not hurry, you will miss the bus', which is exactly the original sentence, so the transformation is correct.
A second, faster check for the same family. Ask what happens if the condition is not met. With 'Unless you hurry, you will miss the bus', the miss occurs when the person fails to hurry - matching the original. With Kiran's sentence, the miss occurs when the person hurries, which contradicts the original. The meaning test catches the error even when a student cannot name the double negative.
Drill it with three pairs on the board - 'unless it rains / if it does not rain', 'unless you revise / if you do not revise', 'unless she calls / if she does not call' - and have students convert in both directions, since the error only appears in one direction.
3. Rewrite the scheme's closing note so that it gives clear guidance without creating a loophole.
Read the worked answer
The present note - 'Accept any grammatically correct equivalent' - is too broad because it only tests grammar, not equivalence. A sentence can be perfectly grammatical and still be the wrong answer, as Kiran's items (ii) and (iv) show. Suggested replacement:
Accept: omission of the by-agent in the passive; 'though' in place of 'although'; contracted forms; either 'the next day' or 'the following day' in reported speech. Do not accept: a change of tense in reported speech after a past reporting verb; a change of polarity after 'unless'; a reordering that changes the relationship between clauses; any answer that is grammatical but means something different from the original.
The note should also tell the examiner what to do with a half-correct answer, because the scheme currently forces an all-or-nothing decision. A two-part item - for example reported speech that backshifts the tense but leaves 'tomorrow' unchanged - should be marked ½, and the scheme should say so. Without that instruction, two examiners will mark the same script differently, and the student's score will depend on who opens the bundle, not on what she knows.