ICSE Class 10 English Language Previous Year Question Papers with Solutions (2020-2026)

Many students search for the ICSE 2021 English Language paper. CISCE cancelled the 2021 Class 10 board exams in April that year because of Covid, so no board paper was written. The oldest paper in our table is the 2020 board paper, with its solution.

CISCE's 2027 English Language specimen paper, with its answer key, is on the CISCE specimen papers page. It has the same five questions and the same marks as the 2026 paper.

ICSE English Language 2026 paper: question-wise marks

• Question 1, composition, 20 marks: 300 to 350 words on one of five topics. In 2026 they were a story opening with a midnight doorbell, changing one period in your timetable, your favourite restaurant or food stall, for or against "Homework is a necessary evil", and a picture.
• Question 2, letter, 10 marks: an informal letter inviting a classmate to a study group, or a formal letter to the Municipal Commissioner about broken drainage.
• Question 3, notice and email, 5 + 5 marks: both on an Inter House Non-Flame Cooking Competition; the email invited a famous chef to judge.
• Question 4, comprehension, 20 marks: 3 marks of vocabulary MCQs, 9 marks of short answers and an 8-mark summary in 50 words. The passage was adapted from Totto-chan by Tetsuko Kuroyanagi.
• Question 5, grammar, 20 marks: eight verb forms (4), eight prepositions (4), four sentence-joining MCQs (4) and eight transformation MCQs (8).

Source: CISCE ICSE 2026 English Language (English Paper 1) question paper, Gradehunt analysis.

Put the marks together and the paper splits four ways. Extended writing (composition, letter, notice, email and summary) is 48 of the 80 marks. Choose-the-option items are 15, one-word blanks 8 and short comprehension answers 9.

How long to spend on each question

The paper is two hours, and its instructions advise no more than 30 minutes on the composition and 20 on the letter. That leaves 70 minutes for the other 50 marks, a little under 1½ minutes a mark. The composition gets 1½ minutes a mark and the letter 2, a little more than the rest of the paper gets. Plan the composition during the 15 minutes of reading time and you start writing with the outline already in your head.

Grammar in the 2026 paper, item by item

Question 5 is the most predictable 20 marks in the paper: the 2026 paper and the 2027 specimen use the same four parts. Here is what each tested in 2026:

• Transformations: "No other king is as great as", active to passive ("Promises should be kept"), reported speech, "Having finished", unless to if, too to so...that, a noun changed to an adjective (difference to different), and "Not only... but also".
• Joining without and, but or so: a participle ("Picking up the bundle"), neither...nor, because and although.
• Prepositions: according to, by means of, a passion for, on the back, since last May, through the night, beyond her means, and before he was born.
• Verb forms: a cobra on a road in Tanganyika, with past tenses, a to-infinitive (not to run over it) and a past participle (so frightened).

All twelve joining and transformation items were multiple choice, and so are they in the 2027 specimen. Each wrong option is close to the right one, often a small tense or word-order slip, so read every option to the end before you pick.

What the 2027 English Language specimen shows

• Same layout: composition 20, letter 10, notice and email 10, comprehension 20 and grammar 20, all compulsory.
• The notice and email are again about one school event: a poster designing competition, with the email inviting an artist to judge.
• The comprehension passage is adapted from Ernest Hemingway's "A Day's Wait" and again ends with an 8-mark summary in 50 words.
• Each question carries a skill tag. The compositions are tagged Creativity or Evaluation, and grammar is tagged Application.

CISCE's circular of 9 October 2026 says apply, analyse, evaluate and create questions will carry about 50% of the weightage in 2027 exams across subjects.

How to practise with these English Language papers

• Write 2026 and 2025 as full two-hour papers, keeping to the 30 and 20 minute limits for Questions 1 and 2.
• Pick a different composition type each time: story, description, argument, picture. On exam day you choose only one, but you should not depend on a single type.
• For the verb-form passage, write the answers in serial order against each number, as the paper asks, without copying the passage.
• Count the words in your summary. The 2026 summary limit was 50 words for 8 marks.
• Use the 2022 semester papers and the 2020 paper for extra grammar and comprehension sets.

Our 10 Years Solved Papers (PYQ) for ICSE Class 10 brings ten years of English Language board papers together, arranged chapter-wise with answers and updated to the latest CISCE syllabus, including the 2026 questions.

See our ICSE Class 10 English Language syllabus for the full topic list, and the English Literature past papers for Paper 2.