178 Words Into 160: Marking a Précis Without Rewriting It
The Class XII terminal examination in Code 110 contains a précis item worth 10 marks. The source passage runs 480 words and the instruction reads: 'Summarise in about one-third of the length, in your own words.' The department has agreed content 5, expression 3, brevity 2; the question does not ask for a title, so a title carries no marks. Reena's answer runs 178 words in five sentences: S1 (31 words) states the passage's central claim that village libraries fail because they are stocked with the wrong books; S2 (44 words) reproduces two examples with their attendance figures; S3 (28 words) restates S1's claim in different vocabulary; S4 (39 words) adds 'In my opinion the government should give each panchayat a fixed grant'; S5 (36 words) records the passage's concession that some libraries do succeed, and its conclusion. Reena has also written the title 'The Empty Shelf'. Twenty-nine other scripts show the same two habits - keeping the examples and adding an opinion.
1. Which sentences must be cut to bring Reena within the limit, and on what principle? Show the arithmetic.
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The limit is one-third of 480, i.e. 160 words; Reena is 18 words over. But the cuts should be chosen by function, not by counting down to 160, because brevity is only 2 of 10 marks.
- S4 (39 words) - cut, unconditionally. It is Reena's opinion, not the author's. A précis reproduces another's thought; adding matter breaks fidelity, which is a content fault, not merely a length one.
- S3 (28 words) - cut. It duplicates S1. Repetition is the commonest cause of an over-long précis, and deleting it costs no content.
- S2 (44 words) - cut or compress. Illustrative instances are detail; a précis keeps the generalisation the instances serve. If the attendance figures are the passage's load-bearing evidence, compress rather than delete: 'Attendance in both surveyed districts fell by half within two years' (11 words).
After cutting S4 and S3: 178 − 39 − 28 = 111 words, comfortably inside 160 and with room to keep one compressed example. What survives is the structure a précis must preserve - claim (S1), concession, conclusion (S5). Full brevity marks, and content marks restored by the deletion of the opinion.
2. Is the added opinion a content error or an expression error, and how should the title be treated?
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The opinion is a content (fidelity) error. The prose in S4 may be perfectly well written; what is wrong is that it introduces matter absent from the source. Deduct from content - 1 mark where the opinion is an appendage, 2 where it displaces the author's conclusion - and leave expression untouched. Marking it under expression would teach the class that an opinion is acceptable provided it is elegantly phrased, which is the opposite of the skill being tested.
Two consistency points for the 30 scripts:
- The title. No marks, no penalty: the question did not ask for one, and content-based marking must not be contaminated by an unrequested extra. But decide explicitly whether the title counts towards the word limit - the usual convention is that it does not unless the instruction says so - and write that on the key, because Reena's 178 may or may not include 'The Empty Shelf' and 29 other scripts may differ.
- The examples. Since 29 scripts keep the examples, treat this as a class-wide pattern rather than 29 individual lapses: deduct on content where the detail crowds out the argument, and add one line of whole-class feedback distinguishing claim, support and illustration.