When a spoken form enters the script: plurals and vowel length
In an Oshana-region school, 32 NSSCAS learners sit a 10-mark section headed 'Language in use'. Three items produce the same patterns. In item 3, learners must give the plural of oshinima: 17 write oshinima unchanged, 9 write iinima and 6 write ooshinima. In item 5, asked for the plural of omuntu, 14 write oomuntu, 11 write aantu and 7 leave it blank. In item 6, asked for the plural of eho, 20 write oma eho, 8 write omeho and 4 write eho. In item 9, 21 learners write unona where the class notes give uunona. The head of department says marks must follow the prescribed standard orthography of the set textbooks. A parent has complained that oomuntu is 'how we say it at home'. The teacher must return the scripts on Monday with a defensible mark scheme and a short written comment she can read to the class.
1. Which forms do you credit in items 3, 5, 6 and 9, and what pattern explains each correct answer?
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Credit only the standard written forms, and show the class the pattern rather than the isolated word - that is what makes the item teachable.
Item 3: iinima. The oshi- prefix of class 7 takes the ii- plural in class 8. Ooshinima is an overgeneralisation of the oo- plural that belongs to other classes; oshinima unchanged shows the learner has not recognised a countable noun at all.
Item 5: aantu. The plural of omuntu is not built by swapping a prefix - it is a suppletive form and must simply be known. Oomuntu is understandable and heard in speech, but it is not the standard written plural, so it earns nothing in a grammar item testing this point.
Item 6: omeho. Class 5 e- takes the oma- plural, and the vowel of the stem is affected, giving omeho, not oma eho written as two words. The written form is one word.
Item 9: uunona. Vowel length is phonemic and is written with a double vowel in standard orthography; unona is a spelling error, not a different word.
Marking note: 1 mark each, no half marks, and no mark deducted twice for the same error within one item.
2. The parent says *oomuntu* is 'how we say it at home'. Write the three or four sentences the teacher should give the class, without calling the home form wrong Oshindonga.
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'Oshindonga has more than one way of speaking, and what you hear at home is real Oshindonga - nobody is being told that their family speaks badly. But this examination marks one agreed written standard, the one printed in your set textbooks, and in that standard the plural of omuntu is aantu. The same is true of English, where written forms differ from what people say in the street: the exam tests the written form. So learn both: use aantu in your writing here, and keep oomuntu where it belongs - in speech, at home, among family. What is being marked is not who you are, it is whether you can switch to the standard when the task requires it.'
Why this wording matters: the class must not conclude that school Oshindonga is fake, or that dialect features are shameful. The examinable point is register and standard written norm, and framing it as code-switching keeps the learner's home variety intact while making the mark scheme defensible.
3. The head of department suggests dropping item 5 because it is 'unfair to learners whose families say oomuntu'. Argue for or against, using the marking evidence.
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Argue against dropping it, but for rewriting the teaching that preceded it.
The evidence in the class is not that the item is unfair - 11 learners produced aantu, so the form is learnable - but that the plural of omuntu had been taught as a prefix rule when it is a suppletive form that has to be memorised. Dropping the item removes the only diagnostic evidence of that gap and leaves learners unprepared for the same point in the external paper, where a suppletive plural is entirely fair game in a language examination.
What is unfair is testing a memorised form without having taught it as an exception. So: keep the item, add three or four other suppletive or irregular plurals to the next test (omuntu/aantu type forms) so learners see the category rather than one word, and teach the difference between a prefix pattern and a form that must be learned whole. Record in the department minutes that the written standard is the marking authority and that spoken variants are not penalised outside grammar items of this kind.