Choosing Among Revisions That Are All "Correct"
Ms. Rivera gives a one-sentence editing task. Students must revise: "Each of the players were tired, and the reason the team lost was because they didn't practice." Four revisions are turned in. A. "Each of the players was tired, and the reason the team lost was because they didn't practice." B. "Each of the players were tired, and the team lost because they didn't practice." C. "Each of the players was tired, and the team lost because they didn't practice." D. "The reason the team lost was that they didn't practice, and each of the players was tired." The rubric awards full credit for a revision that is fully correct and preserves the writer's original emphasis.
1. State the status of each revision: fully correct, partially correct, or incorrect, with the reason.
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- A - partially correct. Fixes agreement ("each" is singular, so "was"), but keeps "the reason … was because," which is redundant: "the reason was that" or "because" alone, not both.
- B - partially correct. Fixes the redundancy ("the team lost because …"), but leaves "players were," so the agreement error remains. It is the mirror image of A.
- C - fully correct. Both errors are repaired: "was" for agreement, "the team lost because" for redundancy. Word order and the writer's emphasis are unchanged.
- D - fully correct grammatically. "The reason … was that" and "players was" are both right. However, it swaps the two clauses, so the sentence now leads with the loss rather than with the players' fatigue. Grammar passes; the emphasis criterion is the open question.
2. Under this rubric, which single revision earns full credit, and how would you respond to a student who chose the other grammatically correct one?
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C earns full credit. It is the only revision that is both fully correct and minimal: it changes exactly the two problematic elements and nothing else, so the writer's emphasis (players tired first, then the reason for the loss) survives intact.
Responding to the student who chose D: do not call it wrong. Name what is right-the agreement fix and the "reason … that" correction-then make the criterion explicit: "Your sentence is grammatical, but you moved the loss to the front. The task asked you to keep the writer's emphasis, so the change costs you full credit here even though your grammar is better than A's or B's."
This is the judgment the item is testing: "correct" and "appropriate to the task" are not the same judgment, and students who conflate them will over-edit when a rubric rewards restraint.
3. Name the two error types in the original sentence and one related error a teacher should watch for in the same students' writing.
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Error types:
- Subject–verb agreement with an indefinite pronoun. "Each" is singular even though "of the players" is plural; the intervening phrase pulls the verb toward plural.
- Redundancy in adverbial clauses. "The reason … was because" doubles the causal meaning; standard revision is "the reason … was that" or "because" alone.
Related error to watch: pronoun agreement with "each" later in the same sentence or paragraph-students who write "Each of the players was tired" will often continue "… and their legs ached." That is the same underlying confusion about whether "each" is singular, so it is the natural next item to check rather than a separate lesson.