Re-read Text C, The Night Shift, in the insert. A local public radio station in Chicago is making a program about the people who work through the night in t...

What this question tests. Two things at once: whether you have read Text C closely enough to rebuild it from inside a different head, and whether you can hold a voice that is not the narrator's. You are Dale, not Marisol. He is sixty-one, retired from the water department, eleven winters into night work for which, as far as anyone can establish, he has never been thanked. He moves his blanket and gloves off the passenger seat with the resigned courtesy of a man who has done exactly this several thousand times, he talks at a level pitch about nothing while he works, he laid the blanket over the animal's head before he touched it, and he had guessed the outcome before the vet spoke. Everything the interview says should sound like that man: practical, unsentimental, quietly worn down. A script that retells Marisol's paragraphs in Marisol's tone has missed the central requirement however fluent it is.

The task requirements a marker checks first.

• The words given in the question must actually start the answer: "The call came in at about one twenty ...". A script that opens anywhere else has not followed the instruction.
• It must read as an interview. Write the reporter's questions in, or shape the replies so that the questions are obvious. A continuous essay about the night is the wrong form.
• Continuous spoken prose in Dale's own words. Lifted sentences from Text C and note form both cost marks.
• All three bullets, each answered in full, in about 250 to 350 words.

Read the three bullets as five demands. The first two bullets each contain two, joined by "and", and the second half of each is where the content marks are won:

1. what you found when you reached the ditch;
2. how you and Marisol actually got the animal out of the water and into the van;
3. what eleven winters have taught you about the animals;
4. what they have taught you about the people who call you out;
5. what you want listeners who would like coyotes removed to understand.

Weak answers describe the ditch and then skip the handling, and generalize about wildlife while forgetting the callers. Check each of the five before you write.

Content [15]. Marks are for development: taking a detail from Text C and making something of it in Dale's voice, not listing details. Roughly even coverage of the three bullets is expected.

• What you found (from the text): the call at 1:20; the man who had stood over the animal in the sleet for forty minutes and would not leave; the drainage ditch behind the tire shop off Elston Avenue; eight inches of black water; litter so like the animal in color that it could not be picked out for a few seconds; smaller than expected, about twenty-six pounds; one hind leg folded wrongly; it lifted its head and watched, and it did not snarl.
• How you got it into the van (from the text): everything done slowly; talking the whole time at a level pitch about nothing, which keeps the animal from panicking and is a technique rather than chatter; the folded blanket laid over the head before he touched it, after which it went still; the instruction to Marisol to take the hips and not to look at the leg; the two of them carrying it up the bank in the blanket, and it never struggled.
• What the animals have taught you (inference, grounded): that most of the work is routine and most of the intake is pigeons; that you do the slow correct thing rather than the quick one; that a covered animal stops fighting you; that some outcomes are known in the van before the vet says them, and you drive out anyway. His own line, "You get the ones you get", is the seed of this and should be expanded, not merely quoted.
• What the people have taught you (inference, grounded): that the work is done in the small hours by people nobody thanks; that a stranger nevertheless stood in February sleet for forty minutes rather than leave an injured animal alone; that this, and not gratitude, is what keeps him driving. Credit a candidate who lets the contrast do the work instead of stating a moral.
• What you want listeners to understand (opinion, reasonably grounded): the gap between the animal people imagine and the one he carried, which never fought him and weighed twenty-six pounds; that a car, not the coyote, caused this; that the argument should be had honestly rather than emotionally; that people who want them gone are not stupid and he has heard them out for eleven years. The strongest answers let Dale concede something instead of turning him into a campaigner.

Content bands. 15-13: all three bullets fully and evenly covered, text detail convincingly developed, Dale's separate knowledge and point of view sustained. 12-10: all three covered with some development, one perhaps thinner; voice mostly held. 9-7: bullets covered largely by retelling; the role slips toward Marisol. 6-4: a bullet neglected, or the answer drifts away from Text C; role barely established. 3-1: fragmentary, or Text C copied with the pronouns changed. 0: nothing creditworthy.

Writing [10]. Register, structure and accuracy. What is wanted is speech for radio: an audible voice, an interview shape with the reporter present, sentences that a sixty-one year old driver would actually say, varied and precise vocabulary, secure punctuation of speech, and control of the word range. 10-9: assured and consistent voice, precise language, virtually error free. 8-7: clear voice and good control, minor lapses. 6-5: accurate but plain, some drift in register. 4-3: frequent errors that blur meaning, register inconsistent. 2-1: heavy error, little control. 0: not creditworthy. Penalize only what the task actually assesses: the wrong voice or register for a radio interview, note form or bullets in place of continuous speech, lifting from Text C rather than reworking it, and any bullet left unanswered.

Model answer (about 335 words).

The call came in at about one twenty. Coyote in the drainage ditch behind the tire shop off Elston, hit by a car. The man who phoned it in had been standing over the animal in the sleet for forty minutes and would not go home. I wrote three words on my hand and reached for my coat.

REPORTER: What did you find when you got down there?

Nothing, at first. Eight inches of black water at the bottom of that ditch and trash all through it, and the animal was the same color as the trash. Then it picked its head up. Smaller than people imagine, maybe twenty-six pounds, one back leg folded under it wrong. It never snarled at us once.

REPORTER: How did you get it up to the van?

Slowly, and talking the whole time about nothing at all. That is not chatter, that is the job. I laid the folded blanket over its head before I put a hand on it, because a thing that cannot see you generally stops fighting you, and it went still. Then I told Marisol to take the hips and not to look at the leg. We carried it up the bank in the blanket, laid it in the back, and it never struggled once.

REPORTER: Eleven winters. What does that teach you?

Patience, mostly. Most nights it is pigeons. Some nights you already know in the van what the vet is going to say, and you drive out anyway. The people surprise you, though. Nobody has ever called me up to say thank you. But somebody stood out in February sleet for forty minutes for an animal most of them would cross the street to avoid.

REPORTER: And to listeners who want them removed?

Only this. That one watched me come down the bank and never once went for me, and a car is what put it there. I am not asking anybody to love them. I am asking for an honest argument about what is actually in the ditch.

How this answer goes wrong. Stay inside what Dale can know. He was not inside Marisol's head in the back of the van, and the reflection that closes Text C is hers, not his. Just as important, invent nothing the passage does not give you: no numbers for the city's coyote population, no causes the text never mentions, no equipment nobody used. Detail that cannot be traced to a paragraph reads as padding to a marker, and it crowds out the developed points that actually earn the fifteen content marks. [Total: 25]