Fixing the Debate Notice
At Shonar Bangla School the Literary Club must put a notice about the inter-house debate on the board before Sunday assembly. The secretary, Rifat, writes the draft below and hands it to the teacher-in-charge.
NOTICE All students are informed that the Inter-House Debate will be held on 14 August in the school hall at 10 a.m. Students who wants to participate must give their names to their house captain before 10 August. The topic is 'Homework should be banned'. Each speaker will get three minutes only and they must not exceed it. The winner will be decided by the judges and they will be given a prize. Refreshments will be served to the participants only after the debate is over.
The teacher says, 'The facts are right, but readers will misread two sentences and two words are used badly. Repair the notice - do not turn it into a letter.'
Nadia suggests replacing 'Students who want to participate must give their names to their house captain before 10 August' with 'Interested students should inform their house captains.'
1. Find four problems in Rifat's draft, name the type of problem for each, and give the smallest correction that fixes it.
Read the worked answer
Subject–verb agreement: 'Students who wants to participate' → 'Students who want to participate'. The relative pronoun 'who' stands for the plural 'students', so its verb must be plural.
Misplaced 'only': 'will get three minutes only' → 'will get only three minutes'. As written, 'only' dangles at the end and can be read as 'three minutes and nothing else' rather than the intended limit.
Ambiguous pronoun: 'they must not exceed it' - 'they' could be the speakers or the minutes. Rewrite: 'and no speaker may exceed this limit'.
Ambiguous pronoun again: 'The winner will be decided by the judges and they will be given a prize' - 'they' could be the judges or the winner. Rewrite: 'The judges will decide the winner, who will receive a prize.'
Squinting 'only': 'to the participants only after the debate is over' can mean 'only participants get refreshments' or 'refreshments only after the debate'. Decide the meaning: 'Refreshments will be served after the debate, and only to participants.'
Any four of these, correctly named and corrected, are enough; the important habit is to say what kind of fault it is before rewriting.
2. Evaluate Nadia's replacement sentence. Give one reason to accept it and one reason to reject it, and say which sentence you would actually put on the board.
Read the worked answer
Reason to accept: it is shorter, active and reads easily at a glance; 'Interested students' speaks directly to the reader, which suits a board notice.
Reason to reject: it silently deletes two facts the notice exists to carry - what to do (give names to the house captain) and by when (before 10 August). 'Should inform' is also weaker than 'must' for a rule, and 'inform' does not say whether the student writes, signs a list or speaks to the captain.
Decision: keep Rifat's sentence, corrected to 'Students who want to participate must give their names to their house captain before 10 August.' The deadline is the single most useful item on the notice; a shorter notice that loses it creates exactly the confusion the notice was meant to prevent. If length is the worry, shorten elsewhere - the refreshment sentence can be cut without losing essential information.
3. The teacher wants a student walking past to understand the notice in about twenty seconds. Suggest three layout changes that do not change the wording.
Read the worked answer
Heading: put 'NOTICE' in capitals and centre it; directly below, one line with the essentials - 'Inter-House Debate · 14 August · 10 a.m. · School Hall' - so date, time and place are found without reading the paragraph.
Separate the topic: give 'Homework should be banned' a line of its own in quotes, so it does not get lost mid-paragraph.
Make the deadline visual: bold, underline or box 'before 10 August', and start the entry rule with 'To enter:' so the action stands out.
Two further touches help: sign at the bottom (name, class, post, date) rather than burying the writer's name, and keep the sign-off below the last line of text. None of these changes a single word of Rifat's text - layout, not language.