Four Marks, Four Criteria: Scoring a Character Question in Prose
A Class 10 Kannada L2 teacher has just finished a prose lesson in which a grandmother insists on repairing a torn national flag herself on the eve of Independence Day; her son calls her stubborn, the narrator calls her devoted. The four-mark question reads: 'Which word does the lesson support - stubborn or devoted? Justify with two details from the text.' Three scripts lie on the desk. Script A: 'Stubborn, because old people do not listen to anyone.' Script B: 'Devoted. She refuses help not from pride: the flag was hoisted by her late husband, and the narrator notices her hands tremble as she works. The son sees only the delay; the narrator sees the memory.' Script C is 118 words retelling the lesson from morning onwards and ends, 'so she is devoted.' The rubric allots 1 mark for the position, 2 for textual evidence, 1 for commenting on the contrast between the two views. Two students ask why C, the longest answer, did not receive full marks.
1. Assign marks to A, B and C under the rubric, and state precisely which mark is lost in each weak answer.
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A - 0/4. The position 'stubborn' contradicts the narrator's framing, and 'old people do not listen' is a generalisation, not a detail from the text. No position mark, no evidence mark, no contrast mark.
B - 4/4. Position (1): 'devoted'. Evidence (2): the flag was hoisted by her late husband; her hands tremble as she stitches. Contrast (1): the son measures delay, the narrator measures memory - exactly the comparison the question asks for.
C - 2/4. The position (1) is present at the end. One evidence mark is defensible because the retelling contains the stitching detail. The second evidence mark and the contrast mark fail: a retell lists events in the order they happened instead of selecting the two details that prove the claim, and it never says what the son's view misses. Length earns nothing - the rubric has four criteria and none of them is 'amount of text'.
2. Rewrite C as a full-mark answer in no more than 55 words. State what you deleted and why.
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Model rewrite (51 words): "Devoted. The flag was first hoisted by her late husband, so repairing it is a memorial act rather than mere obstinacy; the text notes her trembling hands as she stitches. Her son calls her stubborn because he counts the delay, while the narrator counts the memory. The lesson's sympathy lies with the narrator."
Deletions and reasons:
- The morning scene, the neighbours' dialogue and the weather - none is used to prove the claim; keeping them buries the two evidences.
- The chronological connectives ('first... then... after that') - they signal retelling rather than argument.
- The closing 'so she is devoted' - the claim belongs at the front, where it can govern the evidence, not at the end as a conclusion to a story.
What was added is the one thing C lacked: a sentence that explicitly weighs the son's word against the narrator's.
3. A student asks, 'If I write more, won't I get more marks?' Write the reply you would give, using this question as the example.
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"Marks here are attached to four things: the claim, two pieces of evidence, and one comment on the contrast. Count them on your fingers. A 45-word answer that does all four beats a 120-word retell that does two, because the examiner is ticking criteria, not measuring lines. Extra length costs you twice: it eats time you need for the poetry and grammar sections, and it hides your evidence inside narrative, so a tired examiner may not find it. In the exam, plan three sentences before writing - claim, evidence, contrast - then stop. If you have spare time, spend it checking spelling and adding a second evidence, not a second paragraph of story."