Reported Speech and Editing: Deciding What the Key Should Accept
A 10-item grammar task, one mark per item, no negative marking; the key states “accept any grammatically acceptable rendering.” Item 7: convert to reported speech - “We will not sign the accord until the monitoring team returns,” the minister said. Ishaan writes: “The minister said that they will not sign the accord until the monitoring team returned.” Item 8 is an editing item: “One of the students have submitted the form” - Ishaan writes: “One of the students has had submitted the form.” Item 9 asks candidates to rewrite a sentence beginning “Hardly had …”; Ishaan leaves it unchanged. Ishaan’s total is later disputed by his father, a degree-college lecturer who argues that the key is over-strict on Item 7 and that his son has been penalised for a defensible choice. The paper has already been marked and returned.
1. Decide whether “will” should be credited in Item 7, and state the rule the key should follow.
Read the worked answer
Not as Ishaan has written it - 0 of 1. The problem is not “will” itself but the mixture: the main clause is unshifted (“will not sign”) while the subordinate clause is backshifted (“returns” → “returned”). English tolerates either consistent option, not a splice of the two.
The rule the key should state:
- Backshift throughout: “said that they would not sign the accord until the monitoring team returned.” (standard)
- Retain throughout, where the statement is still true or still future at the time of reporting: “said that they will not sign … until the team returns.” (defensible; common in journalism)
- Reject a mixed sequence, as here.
So the father is half right: “will” is not automatically wrong, and the key should be annotated to show that. But the annotation does not rescue this script, because the inconsistency is exactly the error the item is designed to catch. If the paper has already been returned, the fair remedy is to publish the annotation for future use rather than to reopen individual totals.
2. Ishaan corrected “have” to “has” but also changed “submitted” to “had submitted.” How should this be awarded, and what does that reveal about the editing item type?
Read the worked answer
0 of 1. “One of the students has had submitted the form” is not English; the candidate has produced a new error while fixing the targeted one. There is no partial credit inside a one-mark item, so the mark cannot be rescued by the correct half.
Two principles follow, and both should be in the marking guidance:
- In editing items, change only what is wrong. A candidate who rewrites untouched elements risks introducing errors and forfeits the mark even when the target is found. The skill being tested includes restraint.
- The target here is subject–verb agreement, since “one of the + plural noun” takes a singular verb. If the paper intended to test tense as well, it should have had two separate items.
For feedback, show the minimal correction - “have” → “has,” nothing else - and give the student three sentences of the same shape (“One of the boys …,” “Each of the letters …,” “Neither of the answers …”) to establish that the head noun, not the nearest noun, controls the verb.
3. Construct a parallel item that tests genuine ambiguity in reported speech, and give a model answer that shows the reasoning a candidate needs.
Read the worked answer
Item: Direct speech: “I will send the files tomorrow,” she said. Report this (a) on the same day, and (b) three days later.
Model answers:
- (a) She said (that) she would send the files tomorrow.
- (b) She said (that) she would send the files the next day / the following day.
Reasoning candidates must show:
- The modal backshifts because the reporting verb is past: will → would.
- Time and place words are deictic - their meaning depends on when and where they are spoken - so “tomorrow” must be re-anchored to the new moment of speaking.
- Accept “is going to” → “was going to” where the sequence stays consistent.
- Reject “tomorrow” in (b), because by then it names a day that has already passed and misreports what was said; also reject a mixed sequence such as “she says she would send.”
Why this item is better than Item 7: it makes the reason for the change visible. Candidates cannot score by mechanically backshifting verbs; they must notice that reported speech relocates the whole utterance in time, which is the concept the item is meant to test.