Four out of Five: Marking Reported Speech When 'Must' Refuses to Shift
You are marking 34 scripts from a Class 10 grammar test. Item 3, worth 5 marks, asks students to rewrite the following in indirect speech: The teacher said to us, 'I will give you a test tomorrow. You must not bring your books.' Your key lists five targets: said to → told; will → would; tomorrow → the next day; must → had to; you → we. Script A reads: 'The teacher told us that she will give us a test the next day and that we must not bring our books.' Script B reads: 'The teacher said us that she would give us a test tomorrow and we must not brought books.' A colleague argues that 'must' need not change and that Script A should therefore lose only one mark. Another colleague wants Script B given 2 marks for effort. You have 40 minutes and 34 scripts, and the marks go on a report card.
1. Award Script A a mark out of 5, target by target, and rule on your colleague's claim about 'must'.
Read the worked answer
Script A: 4 out of 5.
- said to → told ✓
- will → would ✗ - the clear, meaning-level error; backshift is obligatory after a past reporting verb.
- tomorrow → the next day ✓
- you → we ✓
- must → must - accept it. Modal backshift is not mechanical. Must may remain when the obligation still holds at the time of reporting, and had to is used when the obligation is presented as already past. Here the teacher's instruction concerns a test still to come, so both forms are defensible.
Your colleague is right in principle and wrong in arithmetic: accepting 'must' means Script A loses one mark, not that it loses only one mark overall - it also loses the will/would mark. A key that demands 'had to' as the only answer is over-specified.
Score Script B separately at 1–2 out of 5; 'effort' is not a criterion in this item, and the script has a verb-form error ('must not brought') that changes the sentence's grammar, not just its polish. Address that first: modal + base form.
2. Diagnose Script B's errors and decide which single error you would address first with this student.
Read the worked answer
Script B contains four distinct problems, of different kinds:
- 'said us' - verb pattern. Say needs to before the listener; tell takes the listener directly. A learner who writes 'said us' usually has not stored the two patterns as a pair.
- 'would' ✓ - correctly backshifted.
- 'tomorrow' - not shifted. This is a time-reference error, meaning-level but easily drilled.
- 'must not brought' - modal plus past form. This is a rule-level error about verb forms after modals, and the same error will reappear in every tense item.
- 'our books' - the possessive is missing or mis-shifted.
Address 'must not brought' first. It is the highest-frequency, highest-transfer error: it affects conditionals, passives and modals generally, not just reported speech. Teach it as a substitution frame - must not + base form - with three contrastive pairs ('must not bring / must not brought'). Leave 'said us' for the next session; it is a vocabulary-pattern fix, not a system fix.
3. Rewrite Item 3 so it tests reported speech without penalising a defensible alternative.
Read the worked answer
Revised item (5 marks): 'Rewrite the sentences in indirect speech, beginning The teacher told us that… (i) "I will give you a test tomorrow." (ii) "You must not bring your books."'
Add the note: 'You may keep must or change it to had to; either is acceptable.'
Why this is better:
- The reporting frame is supplied. Students spend their marks on backshift, pronouns and time words instead of on the say/tell pattern, which is a separate skill.
- Two sentences instead of one let you allocate marks cleanly: 2 for (i), 2 for (ii), 1 for overall accuracy.
- Naming the accepted alternatives removes the defensible-answer problem in advance, so no script is penalised for a correct choice. A key that hides its tolerance and then applies it inconsistently is what produces appeals.
- It still tests the hard parts: will → would, tomorrow → the next day, you → we, and the modal decision.