Six Problems, Five Marks: Judging a Grammar-and-Usage Item
A teacher marks a 5-mark grammar-and-usage item built on a short student paragraph about a school clean-up at a lake. The paragraph reads: 'Last week our class visit the Kuppalli lake. We was asked to bring gloves. Each of the volunteers have to record the weight of the waste. Our teacher said that she will send the report to the panchayat. We collected 42 kilograms of plastic, that was more than we expected. The lake, which is near the bus stand, they are cleaned every Sunday.' The marking key lists five errors. The teacher finds six problems, and notices that they are of different kinds: two are subject-verb concord, one is tense, one is reported speech, one is a relative-clause choice the key ignores, and one is the resumptive pronoun 'they' in the final sentence. The class has drilled concord and reported speech this term; relative clauses have been taught only in passing.
1. List the six problems, classify them, and decide how to handle the one the key does not list.
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Tense: 'visit' → 'visited'. Concord: 'We was' → 'We were'; 'Each of the volunteers have' → 'has' (the head of the subject is each). Reported speech: 'said that she will send' → 'would send'. Relative clause: '42 kilograms of plastic, that was…' → 'which was' (non-defining clause; comma + which, not that). Resumptive pronoun: 'The lake, which is near the bus stand, they are cleaned' → 'The lake … is cleaned'.
Ruling on the sixth: mark strictly against the key's five and write the extra problem in the margin without deducting. Penalising a student for noticing more than the key teaches them to stop noticing, which is the opposite of what a grammar item is for. Equally, do not add a bonus - the item is out of 5, and inflating it distorts the record. The relative pronoun is the one to note for the whole class, since it was taught only in passing and will recur.
2. One student 'corrects' '42 kilograms of plastic' to '42 kilogram of plastic'. Is that a mark-worthy error? State the rule and the marking consequence.
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The correction is wrong, and the original is right. A number plus a unit plus of plus a mass noun keeps the plural unit: 42 kilograms of plastic, 5 litres of water, 3 metres of cloth. The unit singularises only when it forms a hyphenated modifier before a noun: a 42-kilogram bag, a 5-litre can.
Marking consequence: the student does not earn the mark for that line, and the error is worth a comment because it reveals a rule that has been over-generalised. It should not, however, be deducted from a different item - a 5-mark item that marks five specified problems cannot silently become a six-mark item because a student produced an additional mistake elsewhere in the same paragraph.
3. Write a board rule of about 25 words telling students when 'will' does not backshift in reported speech.
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'Will does not backshift when the reported statement is still true or still future at the moment of reporting: She said she will send it tomorrow.' (25 words.)
The rule matters because the classroom drill ('said → would') produces over-correction: students backshift a promise that has not yet expired. The reliable test to give them is a question, not a rule - is the thing still going to happen when we report it? If yes, both forms are defensible, though the exam key will usually expect the backshifted form; if no, only 'would' works.