Language Section: Three Disputed Keys
A PGT language teacher is finalising a 20-item English section for a mixed-language recruitment mock. Three items are disputed. Item 7: 'Neither of the two candidates ___ the eligibility criteria.' Options: meet / meets / have met / are meeting. Key: meets. Item 11: 'The examination was postponed due to heavy rain.' The task asks students to identify the underlined expression as standard or non-standard; key: non-standard, with 'because of' preferred. Item 15 asks for the best Hindi-to-English rendering of 'उसे अपने भाई से मिलना है'. Options: (a) He has to meet his brother. (b) He is to meet his brother. (c) He must have met his brother. (d) He will be meeting his brother. Key: (a). A candidate challenges Item 11, citing accepted modern usage, and Item 15, saying (b) is equally grammatical. The section is 20 marks, no negative marking, and 4,000 candidates have already taken the test. The teacher must decide whether to re-key, drop, or retain each item, and how to treat candidates who chose the rejected options.
1. Adjudicate Item 7 and Item 11. Which key is defensible, and which item should be withdrawn? Explain the grammatical reasoning.
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Item 7 is defensible. In formal standard English, 'neither of' takes a singular verb when the two alternatives are considered separately: 'Neither of the two candidates meets...' The plural 'meet' is common in informal speech but is not the formal key. The item tests subject-verb agreement and has one best answer.
Item 11 is not defensible as keyed. The objection that 'due to' may only modify a noun is a prescriptive rule that modern usage does not consistently follow. 'The examination was postponed due to heavy rain' is accepted by many style guides and by educated usage; it functions as a compound preposition. An item that labels this 'non-standard' penalises a form that candidates will meet in newspapers and official writing. The item should be withdrawn or re-keyed to accept 'due to' as standard. If the syllabus explicitly teaches the old distinction, the item still needs a clearer signal, such as asking for the form preferred in formal examination style, and even then it is weak.
2. For Item 15, explain why both (a) and (b) are defensible, and rewrite the stem/options so only one answer is correct.
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The Hindi 'उसे अपने भाई से मिलना है' expresses a scheduled or obligatory meeting, but it does not lexicalise the difference between obligation and arrangement. 'He has to meet his brother' conveys obligation or necessity. 'He is to meet his brother' conveys a plan, arrangement, or instruction. Both are grammatical and both can be correct renderings; (c) and (d) change the tense or add a different meaning. A single-answer item needs context: for example, 'He cannot refuse; he ___ his brother.' with options has to / is to / must have / will be. Or ask: 'Which option best expresses an arrangement already fixed by someone else?' with 'is to' as the key. Alternatively, make the item a two-answer discrimination task and key both (a) and (b), but that changes the format.
3. Recommend a fair post-test policy for the three items. Consider drop vs re-key and the effect on 4,000 candidates.
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Item 7: retain the key. Item 11: withdraw and award the mark to all candidates, because the keyed distinction is not a reliable standard. Item 15: withdraw or accept both (a) and (b); withdrawing is cleaner than keying an option that was not the original key, because candidates may have rejected it for unrelated reasons. Dropping two items reduces the section from 20 to 18 marks and changes totals, so the institute must recompute ranks consistently and publish a written notice. Before deciding, check item statistics: if high-ability candidates disproportionately chose the challenged option, that is evidence of a flawed key. The broader lesson is to avoid items whose correctness depends on a disputed usage rule or on an unmarked context.