Composition: Format and factual accuracy in a 5-mark notice
You are moderating a 5-mark notice-writing task. Students must write a notice for the school noticeboard about an inter-house Santali recitation competition. The mark split is: 2 for format (heading, date, salutation or addressee as appropriate, closing), 2 for content (event, date, time, venue, eligibility, contact), and 1 for language. Script A has all six content points correct and its Santali is clean, but it is written like a letter: "Priyo bandhu," then a paragraph, then "Tomar," with no heading and no date. Script B has a correct heading, date, and closing, but says the event is on "Friday, 12th" when the school calendar shows the 12th is a Saturday, and gives the venue as "the school hall" when the school has both a main hall and a junior hall. The teacher has given A 4/5 and B 3/5 because "A's information is complete." You must moderate both.
1. Re-mark Script A and Script B out of 5. Show the component marks and explain the swap in ranking.
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Script A: 3/5. Format 0/2 - a notice is not a letter; the salutation and letter closing are the wrong genre, and there is no heading or date. Content 2/2 - all six points are present and correct. Language 1/1 - clean Santali. Total 3.
Script B: 4/5. Format 2/2 - heading, date, and closing are correct for a notice. Content 1/2 - the event and time are clear, but the weekday is wrong and the venue is ambiguous; either error would mislead a reader, and together they prevent full content marks. Language 1/1. Total 4.
Why the ranking changes: the task is notice-writing, so format is part of the assessed genre, not decoration. Script A has the facts but not the form; Script B has the form and most of the facts, with two checkable errors. The teacher's 4 for A rewards content twice (once in content, once implicitly in language) and ignores the zero format column. The correct ranking reflects what a notice must do: be recognisable as a notice and be accurate enough to act on.
2. Rewrite Script A's opening three lines so that it becomes a notice without losing any content point.
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A rewrite:
ᱥᱩᱪᱱᱟ / NOTICE
Date: 5 August 2025
All students are informed that the Inter-House Santali Recitation Competition will be held on Friday, 12 September 2025, at 10:00 a.m. in the main hall. Students of Classes IX–XII may participate; names must be submitted to the house teacher by 8 September. For details, contact the undersigned.
What changed: the letter salutation is replaced by a heading and date; the information is compressed into notice syntax (passive 'are informed', a clear event sentence, a contact line); the six content points are retained. What did not change: the facts and the register of the Santali, which were already sound. The rewrite shows the student that format is a set of reader expectations - a notice reader scans for heading, date, event, venue, deadline, contact - not an arbitrary rule.
3. What single instruction would you add to the question to reduce the factual errors in Script B without turning the task into a comprehension exercise?
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Add a checking instruction: "Before you finish, verify the weekday against the date and name the exact venue from the school calendar provided in the question."
Why this works: Script B's errors are not failures of imagination; they are failures to cross-check two facts that the student already had. The instruction directs attention to consistency without supplying the answer. It also makes the assessment fair: if the question gives a calendar, the student is entitled to know that the weekday matters.
A weaker alternative would be to provide the full notice and ask students to fill in blanks; that removes the composing skill. A stronger alternative is to include a short fact file (date, weekday, two possible halls) and require the notice to select correctly. That tests the same composing skill while making the accuracy demand visible. The key is to keep the task a notice-writing task, not a reading task.