CBSE Board 2019: Useful Tips, Pattern, Sample Paper For Class 10 English Exam

CBSE board exam for class 10 English paper is scheduled on March 23, 2019. English is usually a scoring paper but can prove to be time-taking considering that students have to write longer answers than usual in this one subject. However, if students stick to the word limit prescribed for a question, they can easily complete the paper with minutes to spare.

CBSE has scheduled the class 10 board exam for English Communicative and English Language and Literature on March 23, 2019. The pattern for both papers is same and both are conducted for 80 marks.

Students are advised to utilise the 15 minutes time given before the exam to read the question paper and read each question and instruction carefully. Every question comes with specific instruction about word limit, number of question to be attempted etc.

There will be three sections in the question paper - Reading, Writing and Grammar, and Literature.

While the first two sections of the question paper will assess your knowledge of the language, the last section will focus exclusively on your understanding of the literature prescribed in the syllabus.

Section A

Section A of the question paper is Reading Comprehension. It will have two passages. There will be direct questions from the first passage. There will be 8 questions from the passage which should be answered in one sentence.

In case of second passage, there will be four direct questions each carrying 2 marks. 2 marks questions should also be answered in one or maximum two short sentences. Apart from these there will be four questions worth 1 mark each. These questions could be of fill in the blanks type, or synonyms/antonyms type.

Students must read the passage carefully before attempting the questions. For direct questions, it is important to write short and to-the-point answers.

Section B

The second section in the question paper is Writing and Grammar carrying total 30 marks. There will be one question on letter writing worth 8 marks. Students will be provided two options for this question and they can attempt only one. There will be another question on short-story writing worth 10 marks. There will be a prompt given for short story writing.

When attempting Writing part of the section, make sure to stick to the theme of the question. If the question, for example, is about Pollution control, then you should write your views about Pollution Control only and cannot digress to other related topics such as Global Warming etc.

In case of grammar, there will be three questions with four sub-questions carrying one mark each. Again you should read the question carefully before writing your answer. Often students score less in grammatical section because they fail to read the questions and do exactly opposite to what is required of them.

Section C

The last section is Literature and it carries 30 marks. One question will be based on an extract from any of the chapters from prescribed textbook and will carry four marks. Then there will be four questions carrying 2 marks each based on stories and plays prescribed in the syllabus.

There will be one long answer type question based on one of the chapters given in the text book and will carry 8 marks.

There will also be 2 long answer type questions each from the novels prescribed in the syllabus, i.e. 'The Diary of Anne Frank' and 'The Story of My Life'. Each of these questions will be worth 10 marks.

In case of literature, students should revise all the chapters carefully and identify central characters, famous quotes, poets etc. For long answer type questions, re-read the summary of the texts and novels and go through the central theme of each poem, play, story and novel since the central theme is always relevant to the question asked.