Thirty Scripts, Two Free Periods

Each sentence points to a different system failure, which is why a blanket 'grammar weakness' diagnosis is useless.

(i) 'is celebrate' - the passive is half-formed: the auxiliary is there, the past participle is not. The student knows something happens to the festival but has no participle form stored.

(ii) 'peoples' - over-regularisation of a plural; the student has internalised the -s rule and applies it to an irregular noun, and probably to other non-count nouns too.

(iii) 'We was' - subject–verb agreement, likely from the nearest-noun habit rather than ignorance of 'were'.

(iv) 'I am living … since ten years' - two errors fused: present continuous used for present perfect, and 'since' used with a duration where 'for' is required. This is the classic tense–aspect gap.

(v) 'The dance are' - agreement with a collective-looking subject; the student is treating 'dance' as the people rather than the performance.

The dominant pattern across the set is agreement and verb form, not vocabulary. That is where the two periods should go.

Comprehensive correction of every error would take three weeks and would be read by nobody. I would correct selectively and mark against the board's own split.

On each script: a mark out of 5 for content, 3 for expression, 2 for accuracy; two errors circled, not ten - one agreement error and one verb-form error - with a coded symbol in the margin rather than the corrected word written in. If I write the answer, the student reads my sentence and learns nothing; if I code it, they must produce the form.

Period 1: return scripts, five minutes of silent reading, then board work on the two target errors using their own sentences anonymised. Students re-write three of their own faulty sentences.

Period 2: a ten-minute re-test - five sentences to repair, same two error types - and self-check against a key. This closes the loop and gives me evidence of whether the feedback worked, which a returned script never does.

The remaining errors I note in my own record and address in the next writing cycle, so nothing is lost, only deferred.

I would treat it as a teaching problem before a discipline problem, and I would not accuse anyone without evidence. First, verify: guidebook prose has a texture - flawless complex sentences next to the student's own broken ones elsewhere in the same script. That contrast is the evidence, and it is fair to show it privately.

Then change the task so that copying stops paying. A guidebook cannot describe the tamarind tree behind the hostel or the specific drum pattern at the Karma dance. Local, sensory, first-hand prompts make borrowed text visibly useless, and they raise the content mark honestly, because detail is what content marks reward.

In class, I would run one 15-minute timed writing task with no materials - this establishes what each student can actually do and gives me a baseline. I would also teach the difference between quoting a source and passing off a source, using a short passage and a citation, because at Class XI this distinction is new to most of them and pretending otherwise is unfair.

Privately, I would tell the nine that a re-draft in their own words earns full marks and that the copied version will not be kept.