Marking a 5-mark prose answer: claim, quotation, word limit
A 14-year-old candidate is sitting the 80-mark Sanskrit third-language paper. Question 12 is worth 5 marks: 'In the prescribed prose lesson, the minister stays silent while the court laughs at him. Was his silence a strategy or a surrender? Answer in about 40 words and quote one phrase from the passage.' The mark scheme splits the marks as 2 for a defensible claim, 2 for evidence tied to that claim, and 1 for staying within the word limit. Three scripts are on the desk. Script A runs to 90 words and retells the whole episode with no claim at all. Script B says 'it was a strategy because he was wise' and quotes tūṣṇīṃ sthitaḥ, but never explains how the phrase supports the claim. Script C says the silence was a strategy, quotes tūṣṇīṃ sthitaḥ, and adds that the phrase shows control rather than defeat, because the court's laughter is reported before it and not after. The examiner must assign marks and write feedback that improves the next answer.
1. Award a mark out of 5 to Script C and justify each part of the award against the three rubric lines.
Read the worked answer
5/5. Walk the rubric in order.
- Claim (2/2): 'strategy, not surrender' is an arguable position, not a summary. It could have gone the other way, so it actually answers the question asked.
- Evidence tied to claim (2/2): the candidate quotes
tūṣṇīṃ sthitaḥand then does the work the rubric is paying for - showing how the phrase supports the claim, by pointing to the order of events (silence recorded before the laughter). A quotation with no link would earn 1, not 2. - Word limit (1/1): roughly 45 words against a 40-word target, within tolerance, and the answer is dense rather than padded. Before releasing the mark, verify that the quoted phrase really occurs in the prescribed passage. A right claim resting on an invented or misremembered quotation loses the 2 evidence marks and cannot be rescued by good prose.
2. Script B scored 3/5. It is substantively correct. Identify what is missing and rewrite it to full credit in under 40 words.
Read the worked answer
The claim is there (2 marks) and the quotation earns half the evidence marks, but the answer never builds the bridge: 'because he was wise' is an inference about character that would fit any silent figure in any story, so the quotation is decoration. Full credit needs the phrase to be used.
Rewrite (29 words): 'Silence was strategy, not surrender: tūṣṇīṃ sthitaḥ is placed before the court laughs, so he withholds speech to test them, not to admit defeat.'
Same claim, same quotation, but now the phrase carries the argument - which is exactly the difference the second rubric line is designed to detect.
3. Script A retells the episode in 90 words with no claim and scored 1/5. Draft one line of feedback that would change the candidate's method, and say whether the word-limit breach deserves an extra penalty.
Read the worked answer
Feedback: 'You have told me what happened; tell me what it means. Before writing, complete the sentence "The minister's silence shows that…" and then delete every sentence that does not support it.'
The breach needs no separate fine. The 1 mark already reflects the missing claim and unattached evidence, and penalising length again punishes the same fault twice. Treat the word limit as a rubric line, not a tariff: if an overrun were fined separately, a candidate with a good 70-word answer could score below one with a vague 35-word answer, which is not what the question is testing.