The Unseen Passage with a Rushed Last Answer
A 10-mark unseen passage of about 180 words is given to 96 candidates in 45 minutes with five sub-questions. The passage describes Salim, who leaves his village, works in a city, and returns after counting his money on the bus. One sub-question asks the meaning of a word that in the passage means hardship but in ordinary speech more often means trouble; 34 candidates give the ordinary sense. Another asks why Salim returned; the reason is implied by two details but never stated. Eleven candidates leave it blank; five give a plausible reason with no textual support. Twenty-one scripts show the last answer rushed and partly illegible.
1. Settle the vocabulary item: which sense is correct, and should the 34 receive credit?
Read the worked answer
Meaning is determined by context. Check the collocation around the word: if the surrounding words point to hardship and the ordinary sense does not fit the sentence, only hardship is correct. The 34 who give the ordinary sense are wrong in context, so they do not receive the mark. But a 1-mark item missed by about 35% of candidates is a signal about teaching, not a reason to change the key after marking. Record the contextual reasoning in the key and add a short context-clue exercise. If the passage genuinely supports both senses, accept both in future papers and revise the item; do not leave the ambiguity in place.
2. The inference item: 11 blank and 5 unsupported. How should it be marked, and what does the blank rate say about item quality?
Read the worked answer
An inference must be warranted by textual detail. The five unsupported answers receive 0, or at most 1 out of 2 if the reasoning is coherent but ignores the passage; they cannot receive full credit for guessing. The 11 blanks are not automatically an item fault: 11% is tolerable if the item is genuinely difficult. Check where the blanks occur. If they cluster in the last five minutes, the problem is timing, not difficulty. Tighten the wording to 'give one reason from the passage', and use the five unsupported answers in class as examples of plausible but unwarranted inference.
3. With 21 rushed scripts, what structural change do you recommend and why?
Read the worked answer
The evidence points to the last item being sacrificed, not to the passage being too hard. Recommend moving the unseen passage earlier in the paper or reducing the sub-questions from five to four, and pilot the change on 30 scripts before adopting it. Adding five minutes is a second option, but it does not help if the section is placed too late. Keep the inference demand; scaffold it instead with a 'quote the line' sub-part. Justify the change by reliability: rushed, illegible answers penalise slow readers and make the item measure speed rather than comprehension.