Hi everyone, I just got my sac back for u3 aos1 and the teacher basically took off two marks for something I think is very unfair. I want to know if anyone can clarify for me if the marks she took off are legible or not. The question was very similar to an exam question that I copied below from VCAA 2020 Q5:

**"Adrian entered into a contract to sell his car to Maria. When the time came to deliver the car, Adrian told Maria that
he had changed his mind and he was not going to fulfil his part of the contract.
Maria initiated civil action against Adrian. She sued him and the matter proceeded straight to the Supreme Court. The
judge did not have the power to order the case to go to mediation. The burden of proof lay with Adrian to prove that
he had not breached the contract with Maria. He was found guilty.

Identify three errors in the scenario above and, for each error, explain the correct civil process or procedure that
should have occurred.

Error 1

Correct civil process/procedure"**

Now a correct answer for this question in the vcaa exam report was "Error: The burden of proof lay with Adrian. Correction: The burden of proof lay with Maria, the plaintiff, as she was the one who brought the action against Adrian."

However, I and a lot of other students instead wrote something like "The burden of proof did not lay with Adrian" as the Error and then explained in the correction that it instead laid with the plaintiff which is essentially correct. HOWEVER, my teacher kept saying how we had to write EXACTLY what the error was from the response itself so we HAD to say "Burden of proof lay with Adrian" which is an error statement. To me, it doesn't make sense because VCAA mentions nothing of this technical thing in any of their exam reports that have a question like this so why did my teacher take those 2 marks for writing an error 'wrong' when I'm showing my understanding either way?

Can someone else just comment or confirm this for me. Thank you.

    5 days later

    Rawrrr_2005
    Hey!

    Hmm, I see where the disparity is coming from. Essentially when it asks for the error, you should aim to, as close as possible, 'quote (you dont need to quote) or state what the mistake is in the case study. I think what you and the other students have done is begin to write the correction in the 'Error' part of the question, and then elaborate on that in the correction part. So I think a possible answer could be:

    Error: The burden of proof lay with Adrian
    Correction: (then you say what you wrote for the 'error' section) The burden of proof did not lie with Adrian, but rather with Maria. This is because Maria is the party who initiated civil action against Adrian, and therefore has the onus to proof her claims against him on the balance of probabilities (to show you know your civil law terminology)

    However I do agree with you in that I don't think its fair to take 2 whole marks off just for that one instance (if it was one instance) 1 mark taken off is understandable. If you repeated the same thing for the rest of the errors, then I do see where your teacher is coming from, though it is harsh to do that.

    What you should focus on however, is how you can learn from this. You will find that your SAC marks, although are important to determine your rank, are subject to change in the final exam- they can scale. So perhaps consider how you can read the question more carefully in future, to avoid small mistakes like this. Nevertheless, you did justify the mistake meaning- you know your content!

    Hope this helps

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