Last check, at speed
Eight frames. Match each to what it marks.
What is being assessed
One label, on every sentence
The assessment for this unit is a labelling exercise, and it is done by somebody else. As you speak, a listener marks every modal perfect you produce with one letter: D for a deduction, R for a regret about yourself, V for a verdict on somebody else. Three totals come back to you at the end.
Nothing about those totals is automatically good or bad. A retrospective with no V at all is usually evasive; one with six is usually bitter; and a listener who cannot decide which letter to write has found a sentence that was ambiguous to everybody except you. What is being assessed is whether you meant the letter you got.
So for every V, one follow-up question: was the test run? Process, document, unasked question. If the answer is in what you said — if you defended the verdict before you delivered it — it counts, and it counts for a lot. If it is not, the verdict was handed out rather than earned, which is the thing this whole unit exists to make visible.
Underneath that sit the forms, and they are cheap marks: have and never of or had, a past participle after it, and can’t have rather than must have not. And the sound: contracted auxiliary, full-length participle, and the stress off the modal unless you actually want the criticism.
Three questions.
1. What are the three letters?
2. Is a high V total bad?
3. What earns a V?
The whole unit on one card
Everything from Unit 32, in the order you will need it
| Move | Frame | Watch for |
|---|---|---|
| Place it on the scale | must have · can’t have · might have · should have | Say what you eliminated. Confidence is not evidence, and a listener hears the scale exactly. |
| Separate ignorance from error | What I could not have known was… | The most useful sentence in a retrospective, and the one most often skipped. |
| Refuse the free credit | It was lucky rather than clever. | A good outcome does not certify the reasoning. Keep the two words apart. |
| Run the test | Process, document, unasked question? | Before every verdict, not after. If any answer is yes, name the thing instead. |
| Name the missing thing | It would have helped if… · What would have made a difference is… | A line, a check, a request, a conversation with a date. Never a quality of character. |
| Say the earned one in full | I should have asked, and I mean that as a verdict. | No softeners. They change the delivery and leave the grade exactly where it was. |
Four questions. Fast.
1. She ___ have known — the email went to her too.
2. He ___ have seen it; it was sent after he left.
3. I should have ___ back to them in the March.
4. You are about to say you should have… and the test comes back yes. What do you say instead?
The unit task
How the thirty minutes run. Six alone to prepare, sixteen in threes for the assessed retrospective, eight to finish the piece and record ninety seconds. Two portfolio pieces come out of this hour: the 340-word retrospective from Lesson 7, finished, and a recorded spoken reflection.
Stage 1 · Alone · 6 minutes · Prepare
A working or studying life, in three decisions: one that turned out well, one you got wrong, and one you have blamed somebody else for.
Six lines. The test is run in writing on lines four and five before anybody speaks.
- 1 · The story you have been telling about this period, in one sentence.
- 2 · What made sense at the time, for each decision, in the reasoning you actually had.
- 3 · One thing you could not have known — and be exact about when you could not have known it.
- 4 · The decision you got wrong, with the test written out: process, document, unasked question.
- 5 · The one you have blamed somebody for, with the test written out again, and the missing thing named.
- 6 · Luck or judgement, on the one that turned out well. One word, and be honest.
Stage 2 · Threes · 16 minutes · The assessed retrospective
Five minutes each. One speaker, one labeller, one auditor.
Four minutes of speaking, one minute of letters and questions.
- Speaker (4 min): the three decisions, in the moves. Say the earned verdict in full and defend it in the sentence before.
- Listener A — the labeller: write D, R or V beside every modal perfect. If you cannot decide, write a question mark; those are the most useful marks on the page.
- Listener B — the auditor: for every must have or can’t have, note what was eliminated. For every V, note whether the test was audible.
- One minute: A reads the three totals and any question marks. B asks about the weakest deduction and the least defended verdict. Neither comments on the decisions themselves.
Stage 3 · Pairs · 8 minutes · Piece and recording
The 340-word retrospective goes into the portfolio in this stage, and so does ninety seconds of you speaking.
Four minutes on the piece, four on the recording.
- Label your partner’s piece the same way — D, R, V beside every modal perfect — and write the three totals at the top.
- Check every V for its defence, and every converted paragraph for a missing thing somebody could add on Monday.
- Record ninety seconds: the story you used to tell, one thing you could not have known, the earned verdict, and the missing thing.
- Play it back once and listen only to the auxiliary. Contracted should’ve, full-length participle, stress off the modal — unless the criticism is meant.
Where the unit landed
Four questions.
1. What did your V column look like?
2. How many question marks did the labeller write?
3. When the auditor asked what you had eliminated, how did the deductions hold up?
4. Compared with Lesson 1, what has changed?
Worth two minutes in your three. Each of you say one sentence you have said about somebody at work in the last year, and then say the version of it that names the missing thing. Then decide, out loud, which of the two you would actually send — because the answer is not always the second one, and a unit that ends with everybody agreeing to never criticise anybody again has taught the wrong thing.
What you can do now
Three questions. Thirty seconds.
1. What does a modal perfect do?
2. How is a deduction negated?
3. What is the test before a verdict?
Next unit — The Environments We Inhabit. This unit was about grading the past with confidence you may not have had. The next one turns the same instinct on a claim about the present: it would appear that, the evidence tends to suggest, this seems to be the case in most instances. Hedging — which is not vagueness, and is the single clearest marker of somebody who knows how much they know.