The Three Disputed Items on a Class V English Worksheet
A PRT is returning a Class V English worksheet and four items have become a problem. Item 1: 'She is ___ honest girl.' (a / an / the) - key says 'a'. Item 2: 'He has been living here ___ 2015.' (for / since / from) - key says 'for'. Item 3: 'He is taller than ___ .' (me / I) - key says 'I'. A parent has written a note saying that 'me' is what everyone says and that her daughter was marked wrong for it. Item 4: 'Write the opposite of ancient.' The key says 'modern'; a child wrote 'new' and lost the mark. There are 38 papers, 12 children have lost marks across these items, papers go home tomorrow, and the same worksheet will be used in the parallel section next week. The head has asked the teacher to be ready with a written explanation for the parent.
1. Adjudicate Items 1, 2 and 3, stating for each whether the key is correct and giving the grammatical reasoning.
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Item 1 - key is wrong. The choice of a/an depends on the sound that follows, not the letter. In 'honest', the 'h' is silent, so the word begins with a vowel sound and takes 'an': 'She is an honest girl.' Compare 'a hotel' (h pronounced) and 'an hour' (h silent) - the same rule, opposite answers. All 38 children should be re-marked; this is the school's error, not theirs.
Item 2 - key is wrong. 'Since' marks a point of time ('since 2015', 'since Monday'); 'for' marks a duration ('for ten years'). The sentence gives the starting point 2015, and the present perfect continuous 'has been living' extends from that point to now, so the correct word is 'since'. If the item had read 'He has been living here ___ ten years', the key 'for' would have been right.
Item 3 - the key is defensible but the item is not a fair discriminator. In formal grammar, 'than' is a conjunction and the full clause is 'than I am', giving 'taller than I'. In ordinary usage 'than' is treated as a preposition and takes the object form, giving 'taller than me', which is standard in speech and accepted in most modern descriptive grammars. Both are grammatical in different registers; the key is right only in the formal written register. For Class V, an item where the register decides the answer tests insider knowledge of a convention, not the child's English.
2. Decide what to do on Item 4 and on the marks for the 12 affected children, justifying your decision rather than just stating it.
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Item 4 - 'new' should be credited. 'Ancient' means belonging to the distant past; its antonym in the sense of 'not old' is 'new' as much as 'modern'. Without a context sentence, both are correct opposites, and 'recent' and 'contemporary' would also be defensible. Marking 'new' wrong does not test vocabulary; it tests whether the child guessed the examiner's preferred synonym, which is a different and unteachable skill.
Marks for the 12 children: re-mark all four items before the papers go home, applying the corrected keys:
- Item 1 and Item 2: credit the grammatically correct answer for every child (Item 1 'an', Item 2 'since').
- Item 3: credit both 'I' and 'me' this time, and record the item as 'flawed - see revised version'.
- Item 4: credit 'new' and any other true antonym such as 'recent'.
Why credit rather than simply teach: the errors are in the key, so the children have been penalised for answers that were right or defensible. Awarding marks is not leniency; it is correcting a wrongly computed score. Leave the reasoning on the board so the class sees why the marks changed - a silent mark change teaches children that marks are arbitrary.
For next week: do not reuse Items 1, 2 and 4 as they stand. Correct the keys before the parallel section sits the worksheet.
3. Rewrite Item 3 and Item 4 so that each has one defensible answer at Class V level, and outline the written explanation you will give the parent.
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Rewriting Item 3. The clean fix is to test a construction where the case of the pronoun is not in dispute: 'Choose the correct sentence: (a) Between you and I, the plan is risky. (b) Between you and me, the plan is risky.' Here 'between' is unambiguously a preposition, so the object form 'me' is required and there is no register-based defence of the other option. If the point is comparison, give the full clause: 'He is taller than I am.' - that fixes the form without depending on a convention.
Rewriting Item 4. Supply a context so that one antonym is clearly intended: 'In the sentence "The ancient temple was restored last year", the word opposite in meaning to ancient is: (a) modern (b) distant (c) broken (d) famous.' The context makes 'modern' the only fit and removes 'new' as a legitimate rival, while still testing the meaning of ancient.
Written explanation to the parent (three points):
- The child's answer 'me' is acceptable English; the key was too narrow, and the mark has been restored. The school apologises for the error.
- The distinction being taught is one of register: 'than I' is the formal written form, 'than me' is normal in speech. The child is not wrong; she is being shown both.
- The item has been rewritten so the class is tested on something with one clear answer, and the child's paper has been re-marked across all four items, not only this one.