Nine Appeals on a Twenty-Item Grammar Test
At a Kolhapur junior college, 58 students have taken a 1-mark-each objective test on vyakarana covering sandhi, samasa and sentence correction. Nine students have appealed against three items. Item 7 asks for the combined form of two given words; the key gives one form, and a student has produced a second form that is current in ordinary written Kannada. Item 12 asks students to classify a compound; the key says dvandva, but the compound can reasonably be read as a collective, which would make it another class. Item 15 asks students to pick the incorrect sentence; the sentence marked incorrect is common in speech and appears in a dialogue in the prescribed textbook, though not in the grammar chapter. The teacher must decide, item by item, whether to hold the key, accept both answers, or void the item, and must explain the decision to a class that is already suspicious that grammar marking is arbitrary.
1. How should items 7 and 12 be resolved, and what is the decision rule behind each?
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The rule is that a single-answer objective item is only fair if exactly one answer follows from the rule the syllabus teaches. For item 7, check first whether the second form arises from a rule that was taught. If it does, the item has two correct answers and cannot stand as written; if the alternative is simply memorised usage outside the taught rule, the key can stand but the item should be flagged in the class log as a poor item. Between accepting both and voiding, prefer accepting both when the alternative is genuinely standard, because voiding punishes the 44 students who reasoned correctly; void only when the item cannot be salvaged. For item 12, the issue is different: the compound has been classified by a criterion the key never states. Name the criterion in the feedback, then decide. If the textbook's own exercise uses the same criterion, hold the key and teach the criterion; if not, the item is over-specified and should be voided for all 58.
2. What should be done about item 15, where the 'incorrect' sentence appears in a textbook dialogue?
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Check the textbook before deciding anything. If the sentence appears in the prescribed book in a dialogue, the key is indefensible as written, because the student who chose it was following the material they were given. The deeper issue is that the item has confused two registers. Written standard Kannada and conversational Kannada differ in exactly the places grammar tests like to probe, and a sentence can be acceptable in speech while being non-standard in formal writing. Once the textbook evidence is confirmed, void the item and use the five minutes it frees to make the distinction explicit: the same sentence, shown first as dialogue and then in a formal paragraph, with students identifying what changes. That converts an appeal into the lesson the item was meant to teach. Holding the key would teach students that the textbook and the examination disagree, which is worse than losing one mark.
3. What changes to test construction and classroom practice would prevent a repeat of these appeals?
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Three changes, all cheap. First, key vetting: before duplication, a second Kannada teacher answers the paper cold, without the key, and any item where the two answers diverge is rewritten or dropped. Most disputed items die at this stage. Second, a disputed-items log kept openly in class, recording the item, the rival answers and the authority (textbook page, grammar rule), so that appeals are answered with citations rather than with confidence. Third, teach grammar through minimal pairs rather than labels: for sandhi, put the two possible combined forms side by side and ask which rule each follows; for samasa, give the same compound in two sentences and show how meaning selects the class. Nine appeals out of 58 is a signal about item quality, not about student attitude, and the response should be visible in the next paper.