Scoring Repetition and Address in a Prescribed Poem
A Sindhi-medium school in Nashik has 29 candidates preparing for the poetry section. The prescribed poem is a five-stanza folk-style lament in which a mother addresses a migrating bird. The refrain 'उडी जा' (fly away) closes stanzas 2, 3 and 5. In a practice test worth 4 marks, students must explain how the repetition and the bird image together create the poem's mood. The scripts show four patterns: 8 students write a stanza-by-stanza summary; 12 mention 'sadness' but do not link it to the bird; 6 quote the refrain and say it shows the mother's love; 3 claim the poem is about environmental destruction because the bird is losing its habitat. One student asks whether she may use a personal story about her own mother in the answer. The teacher must mark the scripts, prepare for a possible 2-mark question on the poet's use of address, and decide how to handle the personal-response request.
1. How should the teacher score the three 'environmental destruction' answers? Give a mark and the reasoning standard.
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Award 3/4 if the answer treats the habitat claim as a secondary implication and still explains the central mood through the mother-bird relationship. Award 2/4 if the answer replaces the poem's central address with an environmental message and cites only 'migrating bird' as evidence. The standard is not whether the reading is modern or socially attractive; it is whether the reading accounts for the refrain and the mother's voice. The refrain 'उडी जा' is an imperative addressed to a bird by a mother; an environmental reading must explain why a mother would repeat that imperative in a lament. If the student says the mother fears the bird will not return because its habitat is gone, that can be a valid secondary layer only if the student also notes the personal loss. If the student ignores the address entirely and writes a paragraph about deforestation, the answer has changed the subject. The teacher should say this explicitly: examiners reward a reading that explains the given text, not one that uses the text as a springboard.
2. Create a 4-mark rubric that distinguishes summary, naming, and appreciation, and place the four groups.
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1 mark: identifies the subject (mother and bird) but mainly retells stanzas - group of 8. 2 marks: names a mood such as sadness or love but gives no textual mechanism - the 12 who mention sadness without the bird. 3 marks: links the refrain or bird image to mood with one explanation, for example 'the repeated उडी जा sounds like both permission and grief' - the 6 who quote the refrain. 4 marks: explains how repetition and address work together across at least two stanzas, and shows how the mood shifts or intensifies; may acknowledge tension between letting go and holding on. The environmental group can reach 3 or 4 only if they connect habitat loss to the mother's repeated imperative. The rubric makes the key distinction visible: a summary moves through events, whereas appreciation explains why a repeated word or an address produces feeling. The teacher can then convert the 12 'sadness' answers into 3-mark answers by asking one question: 'Which word makes it sad, and who is speaking it?'
3. How should the teacher answer the student who wants to use a personal story about her mother?
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Allow the story only as a bridge, not as the answer. Tell her: 'Use your mother's experience to help you hear the mother's voice, but the marks come from what you can point to in the poem.' A practical rule: no more than one sentence of personal illustration, followed immediately by a textual claim. For example, 'My mother also repeats instructions when she is worried; in the poem, the repeated उडी जा suggests the speaker is trying to convince herself as much as the bird.' That sentence earns credit because the personal detail leads to an analysis of repetition and address. If the entire answer narrates a personal story and never quotes the poem, it cannot earn beyond 1 mark under the appreciation rubric. The teacher should also use the student's impulse to prepare the 2-mark address question: ask the class who is being spoken to, whether the bird can answer, and why the poet chooses an absent listener. That keeps personal engagement while training the exam skill of returning to the text.