The Notice That Reads Like a Letter
At Saraswati Vidya Mandir, Kanpur, Section B of the Class 10 English paper has a 4-mark notice task: 'You are Rohit/Rohini, Head Boy/Head Girl of Sunrise Public School, Kanpur. A blue steel water bottle with a broken lid was found in the science lab. Write a notice in not more than 50 words for the school notice board.' The marking scheme allots 1 mark for format (heading, date, name and designation), 2 for content (what, where, when, whom to contact) and 1 for expression. Script 17 reads: 'Dear students, I want to say that I lost my blue bottle yesterday in the lab. It has a broken lid. If anyone finds it, please give it to me. I am Rohit, Head Boy. Thank you.' It is 44 words but has no heading or date, uses a salutation and closing, and says 'I lost' instead of 'found'. The teacher has sixty scripts and a departmental instruction that no script may score above 3 if format is wholly absent.
1. Award Script 17 a mark for each of the three sub-heads and a total, justifying each decision.
Read the worked answer
Format: 0/1. A notice needs a heading, a date and a signature block. 'Dear students' and 'Thank you' belong to a letter, and naming oneself inside the body is not a signature. Because format is wholly absent, the departmental cap of 3 applies.
Content: 1/2. The bottle, the broken lid, the lab and 'yesterday' are present, but 'I lost' reverses the notice: the writer is asking for a lost bottle rather than reporting a found one, so readers are told to return it to the person who lost it - an impossible instruction. One content mark is lost for this purpose error.
Expression: 1/1. 44 words, clear, within the limit.
Total: 2/4. The cap is not binding. Record 'purpose inverted' on the script so the error is visible to moderation.
2. Rewrite the notice in not more than 50 words as a model answer, and state which words you removed and why.
Read the worked answer
Model notice:
NOTICE Lost and Found 12 September 20XX A blue steel water bottle with a broken lid was found in the science lab on 11 September. The owner may collect it from the Head Boy after school. Rohit, Head Boy
Word count: 40.
Removed: the salutation and closing (letter conventions), 'I want to say that' (empty lead-in), 'If anyone finds it' (the bottle is already found), and 'please give it to me' (replaced by the correct collection instruction). The passive 'was found' is used because a notice reports an event to the whole school rather than narrating a personal loss. The date is included because a notice without a date cannot be acted on later.
3. A colleague argues that 'I lost' is only a language slip and should be handled under expression. Decide the issue with reasons.
Read the worked answer
It is a content error, not an expression error. Expression covers grammar, spelling, clarity and register; here the sentence is grammatical and clear. The problem is that it changes the speech act: a found-property notice tells owners to come forward, whereas 'I lost' tells finders to come forward. A reader who follows the script literally would return the bottle to Rohit, which is the opposite of the task.
Mark it under content because it destroys one of the required content points - 'whom to contact and why'. The expression mark can still be awarded in full, since the writing itself is controlled. Feedback should name the difference between a grammatical mistake and a purpose mistake, because bright candidates often lose marks in notice and report writing for exactly this reason.