A football anecdote submitted for an elder's story prompt
The composition prompt is: 'Tell a story that an elder in your community might tell, and let it carry a lesson for young people.' Candidates have 50 minutes and 300–350 words. One candidate writes about a school football match: the team loses because the best player refuses to pass; the narrator scores the winning goal in a replay. The piece begins 'On Saturday we played football' and ends 'That is all.' It contains 14 English words, including 'referee', 'penalty' and 'coach', and no direct address to the audience. The teacher must mark it against four criteria: content and relevance, organisation, language, and genre/voice. The candidate's Khoekhoegowab is generally accurate, with two click errors.
1. What is the main judgment call in marking content and genre here?
Read the worked answer
The main call is to separate the plot from the frame. The plot does contain a usable lesson: the best player's refusal to pass causes defeat, and the replay rewards cooperation. That is relevant to 'a lesson for young people'. But the prompt also asks for a story an elder might tell, and the draft has no storytelling frame: it opens like a personal diary and closes with 'That is all.' A marker should not penalise football as an unfit subject; a traditional teller can narrate a modern event. The penalty falls on the missing frame and on the unshaped moral. The teacher should credit the candidate for a clear turning point and for generally accurate language, then note that a two-sentence opening ('An elder once told us about a match …') and a closing that lets the lesson emerge would meet the genre requirement without rewriting the plot. This is a criterion-referenced judgement, not a taste judgement about sport.
2. How should the 14 English words be treated in a first-language composition?
Read the worked answer
The teacher should distinguish established borrowings from avoidable code-switching. Sports terms such as 'referee', 'penalty' and 'coach' may be the normal community vocabulary for the game, and a first-language writer should not be forced into invented substitutes if none are current. If the terms are integrated into Khoekhoegowab syntax and spelling, they can be accepted under language use, with a note that the candidate might gloss one or two for a wider audience. The problem arises if the English words replace everyday vocabulary that the candidate clearly knows, or if they cluster so that the essay's lexical range looks thin. Fourteen words in 300–350 is noticeable but not automatically a failure. The teacher should mark under language, not content, and should comment on variety and control rather than on purity. The candidate's two click errors should be corrected separately as orthographic accuracy.
3. Propose a revision plan that keeps the candidate's plot but meets the prompt more fully.
Read the worked answer
Keep the match, the refusal to pass, the defeat and the replay; change the telling. First, add a brief frame: who is speaking, to whom, and on what occasion-for example, an elder addressing young people after a community event. Second, sharpen the turning point so that the best player's choice, not luck, decides the outcome; the lesson should be visible in the action before it is stated. Third, replace 'That is all' with a closing that returns the listener to the lesson, perhaps a question or a short proverbial-style line about cooperation, without inventing a fixed formula the candidate does not know. Fourth, keep the football terms that are normal local usage, but vary one or two with Khoekhoegowab description. Fifth, proofread click letters and tone marks. This plan respects the candidate's own material while satisfying content, organisation and genre criteria.