The Key Says (b): Judging an Inference in an Unseen Passage
For a Class 10 unseen-passage test worth 10 marks, you set a 320-word passage on rooftop rainwater harvesting in Jaipur. The passage states: 'Rooftop harvesting is not free: a typical household spends about ₹18,000 on tanks and pipes. Yet the same household recovers the cost in roughly four years, and after that every drop is profit. Societies that have adopted it report a 30 per cent fall in tanker bills.' Question 4 reads: 'The writer's attitude towards rooftop harvesting is best described as (a) enthusiastic (b) supportive but cautious (c) indifferent (d) hostile.' Your key says (b). Meera chooses (a) and underlines 'every drop is profit'. Arjun chooses (b) and cites the ₹18,000 cost. Both demand full marks. Your head of department says the key is final and that MCQs carry no partial credit. You have 30 scripts to return in one revision period.
1. Meera's evidence is genuine and her option is not absurd. Decide her score on the item and justify the decision by distinguishing whole-passage attitude from the tone of a single sentence.
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Mark her wrong, but record it as an inference error rather than a reading error.
- Attitude is sustained; tone is local. The passage is built as concession plus benefit: cost (₹18,000), payback (four years), then gain (lower tanker bills). 'Every drop is profit' is the tone of the sentence that follows the payback, not a claim that cost is irrelevant.
- The 'Yet' clause is doing work. Remove it and (a) would be defensible. With it, (b) is the only option that accounts for both halves of the paragraph.
- Format constraint. In the board's MCQ format there is no partial credit, so she scores 0. That is a marking rule, not a judgement that her reading was careless.
Her error is inferring from the most emphatic line rather than the whole structure. In feedback, show that her own quotation sits after the concession and therefore presupposes it. She should ask: which sentence would the writer delete if she were simply enthusiastic?
2. Write the two-sentence comment you would put on Meera's script, and the single question you would put to the whole class when you return the papers.
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Comment on script: 'You have quoted the writer's strongest line, and that is good reading. Now quote the line that qualifies it - the sentence with the ₹18,000 cost and the four-year payback - and ask whether an enthusiast would have included it.'
Class question: 'If the writer were simply enthusiastic, which sentence in this passage would she have deleted?'
The comment names what she did well before correcting, so she does not conclude that quoting is punished. The class question forces the structural move - locating the concession - rather than asking students to agree with the key. Expect someone to answer 'the sentence about cost'. Follow up with: 'So why did the writer keep it?' That is the inference the item is testing, and it can be reached without mentioning options (a) or (b) at all.
3. Rewrite Question 4 so that the intended inference is testable and option (a) is no longer defensible.
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Revised item: 'Which sentence best describes the writer's overall attitude towards rooftop harvesting, taking account of both the initial cost and the long-term savings?'
Options: (a) uncritically enthusiastic, treating cost as unimportant; (b) supportive, while acknowledging the initial cost; (c) neutral, presenting costs and savings without a view; (d) opposed, because the payback period is too long.
Three changes do the work:
- 'Overall' signals that the whole passage, not one line, is the evidence base.
- 'Taking account of both' names the two halves students must reconcile, so the question tests synthesis rather than guessing.
- 'Uncritically enthusiastic' replaces bare 'enthusiastic'. A student who has understood the passage can now see that (a) misrepresents the writer, because the writer explicitly reports the cost.
Keep (b) as the key. The item now discriminates between a student who spotted one strong phrase and a student who read the paragraph's structure.