CBSE Class 10 English Sample Paper 2026 (with Solutions) — Free PDF
This is a full-length CBSE Class 10 English (Language and Literature) paper built to the board's own pattern: 80 marks in 3 hours, split as 20 marks of rea
TL;DR: This is a full-length CBSE Class 10 English (Language and Literature) paper built to the board's own pattern: 80 marks in 3 hours, split as 20 marks o…
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This is a full-length CBSE Class 10 English (Language and Literature) paper built to the board's own pattern: 80 marks in 3 hours, split as 20 marks of reading, 20 of writing and grammar, and 40 of literature. Both reading passages are printed in full on this page, so every comprehension question can actually be answered from what is in front of you. The literature section refers to the prescribed texts First Flight and Footprints Without Feet and asks for your own words rather than reproduced extracts. Every question is followed by a full model answer, and the longer answers explain what a full-credit response needs to contain.
Board: CBSE · Class: Class 10 · Subject: English · Total: 80 marks · Time: 3 hours
Section A — Reading: Passage I (10 marks) — 10 marks
Read the passage given above and answer the questions that follow. Each question carries the marks shown against it.
Every year, a little before the first rains, the swifts return to the old post office in our town. They come without announcement. One evening the sky above the tiled roof is empty, and the next it is full of thin black crescents cutting the air at a speed that makes the eye give up following them. The birds have flown from somewhere beyond the mountains, and they will leave again in September, and nobody in the town can say precisely where they go.
What is remarkable about a swift is not its speed, though it is among the fastest of birds in level flight. It is that a swift barely lands. It feeds in the air, taking insects on the wing. It drinks by skimming the surface of a tank. It gathers the material for its nest — a floating feather, a wisp of straw lifted by the wind — without once settling. Young swifts, after leaving the nest, are believed to remain airborne for two years or more before they touch anything at all, sleeping as they fly, half the brain resting while the other half keeps watch.
Our postmaster, who retired long ago but still comes to sit on the steps, says the birds have used the same eaves since he joined service in 1971. He is not sentimental about them. He notes their arrival in a small diary, the way he once recorded registered letters, and he is annoyed when they are late. Last year they came eleven days after their usual date, and he took this personally, as though the birds had failed in a duty.
The building itself is due to be demolished. A new office of glass and aluminium will stand in its place, and it will be a better office in every measurable way: brighter, cooler, with a counter that does not flood in July. The plans do not mention the eaves. It has not occurred to anyone that they should. And so a journey of some thousands of kilometres, repeated faithfully for fifty years and probably far longer, will end not in a storm or a predator but in a decision taken in a room where nobody has ever looked up.
Q1. Why does the writer say the swifts 'come without announcement'? (1 mark) (1 mark)
Answer: Because their arrival is sudden and unheralded — one evening the sky above the roof is empty and the next it is full of birds, with nothing to signal the change in advance.
Q2. State any two ways in which a swift carries out ordinary activities without landing. (2 marks) (2 marks)
Answer: It feeds in the air, catching insects on the wing, and it drinks by skimming the surface of a tank as it flies. It also collects nesting material — a floating feather or a wisp of straw — without ever settling.
Q3. What does the passage say about young swifts and sleep? (2 marks) (2 marks)
Answer: Young swifts are believed to stay airborne for two years or more after leaving the nest, without touching anything at all. They sleep while flying, resting one half of the brain at a time while the other half stays awake and keeps watch.
Q4. How does the postmaster's attitude to the birds differ from what one might expect? (2 marks) (2 marks)
Answer: One might expect an old man watching birds to be sentimental, but he is not. He treats their arrival as an administrative matter, noting the date in a diary exactly as he once recorded registered letters, and he is genuinely annoyed when they are late — as though the birds had neglected an official duty.
Q5. Why does the writer call the new building 'better in every measurable way'? What is implied by the word 'measurable'? (2 marks) (2 marks)
Answer: The new office will be brighter, cooler and free of the flooding that troubles the old one in July, so on every count that can be counted it is an improvement. The word 'measurable' implies that what will be lost cannot be measured — the nesting site, and the fifty-year migration that depends on it, do not appear on any plan and so carry no weight in the decision.
Q6. Explain the closing sentence: the journey 'will end not in a storm or a predator but in a decision taken in a room where nobody has ever looked up.' (1 mark) (1 mark)
Answer: It means the swifts will be defeated not by any natural danger they are equipped to survive, but by human carelessness — by planners who never noticed the birds at all, so that the loss is not even intended.
Section A — Reading: Passage II (10 marks) — 10 marks
Read the passage given above and answer the questions that follow. Each question carries the marks shown against it.
In 1854, a physician named John Snow walked the streets of Soho in London with a notebook, and in doing so changed what it means to know something in medicine. Cholera had broken out, and within ten days more than five hundred people in a few streets were dead. The accepted explanation was miasma — bad air rising from filth — and it was accepted by nearly everyone with authority to have an opinion.
Snow doubted it, but doubting was not enough. What he did instead was to mark on a map of the district every death he could confirm, one stroke of the pen for each. The strokes did not spread evenly, as bad air drifting over a neighbourhood would. They clustered. At the centre of the cluster stood a public water pump on Broad Street.
He then went looking for the cases that did not fit, because those are the ones that decide the matter. A workhouse of several hundred inmates stood inside the affected area and had almost no deaths; it had its own well. A brewery nearby lost nobody; its workers drank beer. Two deaths occurred far away in Hampstead, which should have been impossible — until Snow found that the widow who died there had a cart bring her water from Broad Street because she preferred its taste, and that her visiting niece had drunk a glass.
Snow persuaded the parish to remove the handle of the pump. The outbreak was already declining, and honest historians note that the removal probably saved fewer lives than the story suggests. That is not the point. The point is that a man who could not see a bacterium — the organism would not be identified for another thirty years — established how a disease travelled, by collecting ordinary facts, arranging them so that a pattern could show itself, and taking the awkward cases seriously instead of explaining them away.
Q1. What was the accepted explanation of cholera in 1854? (1 mark) (1 mark)
Answer: The accepted explanation was miasma — the belief that the disease was carried by bad air rising from filth — and it was held by nearly everyone in authority.
Q2. How did Snow's map reveal that the miasma theory was wrong? (2 marks) (2 marks)
Answer: He marked every confirmed death on a map of the district. Bad air drifting over a neighbourhood would have produced deaths spread more or less evenly, but the marks clustered tightly instead, and the centre of that cluster was a single public water pump on Broad Street.
Q3. Why did Snow deliberately look for cases that did not fit his idea? (2 marks) (2 marks)
Answer: Because the exceptions are what settle a question. A pattern can be a coincidence, but if the apparent exceptions turn out on investigation to obey the same rule, the explanation is confirmed; if they do not, it is refuted. Snow therefore treated the awkward cases as the real test of his theory rather than as nuisances.
Q4. Explain how the workhouse and the brewery supported Snow's conclusion. (2 marks) (2 marks)
Answer: Both stood in the affected area and so should have suffered heavily under the miasma theory, yet the workhouse of several hundred inmates had almost no deaths and the brewery lost nobody. The workhouse had its own well and the brewery's workers drank beer, so neither group took water from the Broad Street pump — which is exactly what Snow's explanation predicted.
Q5. How were the two deaths in distant Hampstead explained? (2 marks) (2 marks)
Answer: They appeared impossible until Snow discovered that the widow who died there had water brought to her by cart from the Broad Street pump because she preferred its taste, and that her niece, who was visiting, had drunk a glass of it. The apparent exception thus turned into the strongest confirmation of his case.
Q6. What, according to the writer, is the real significance of Snow's work? (1 mark) (1 mark)
Answer: That he established how a disease travelled without being able to see the organism responsible — by gathering ordinary facts, arranging them so a pattern could emerge, and taking the inconvenient cases seriously rather than explaining them away.
Section B — Writing and Grammar (20 marks) — 20 marks
Answer all questions. Marks are shown against each question.
Q1. You are Rohan/Rohini Sharma of 14, Nehru Road, Pune. Write a letter to the Editor of a national daily drawing attention to the loss of nesting sites for birds when old buildings in your city are demolished, and suggesting what builders could do. (5 marks) (5 marks)
Answer: A full-credit answer follows the formal letter format: sender's address and date at the top left, then the receiver's designation and address (The Editor, name of the newspaper, city), the subject line, the salutation 'Sir/Madam', three short paragraphs, and the complimentary close 'Yours truly' with the sender's name. The first paragraph states the purpose — to draw attention through the columns of the paper to the loss of nesting sites as old buildings are pulled down. The second gives the substance: swifts, sparrows and swallows nest in eaves, ledges and ventilators that modern glass and aluminium façades do not provide; the birds return to the same site for decades and cannot simply move; and their disappearance is followed by a rise in insect populations. The third suggests remedies: requiring builders to include nesting bricks or ledges in new façades, surveying a building for nests before demolition, and timing demolition outside the breeding season. The register stays formal throughout, with no contractions and no slang.
Q2. Write a short analytical paragraph in about 120 words on the topic: 'Data is useless until someone arranges it.' Use the example of John Snow from Passage II. (5 marks) (5 marks)
Answer: A strong answer makes a single claim and supports it. For example: The facts of the 1854 outbreak were available to everyone in Soho — the deaths, the addresses, the pump. What nobody had done was arrange them. John Snow's contribution was not the collection of new information but the imposition of order on information already lying about: by marking each death on a map he turned a list into a shape, and the shape pointed at a single water pump. Miasma could not explain a cluster; it predicted a smear. The lesson holds well beyond medicine. Raw numbers assert nothing on their own, and the work of understanding is largely the work of arrangement — of finding the form in which the data can finally speak. (Approximately 120 words, with a clear claim, an example and a general conclusion.)
Q3. Fill in the blanks with the correct form of the verb: (i) By the time we reached the station, the train ______ (leave). (ii) She ______ (work) in this school since 2019. (iii) If it ______ (rain) tomorrow, we shall cancel the match. (3 marks) (3 marks)
Answer: (i) had left — the past perfect is needed because the departure was completed before the past action of reaching. (ii) has been working — the present perfect continuous, since the action began in 2019 and continues now. (iii) rains — in a first conditional the 'if' clause takes the simple present even though the meaning is future.
Q4. Report the following: (i) The teacher said to the students, 'Do not waste your time.' (ii) He said, 'I am reading a novel.' (2 marks) (2 marks)
Answer: (i) The teacher advised/told the students not to waste their time. The imperative becomes an infinitive with 'not', the reporting verb changes to 'advised' or 'told', and 'your' becomes 'their'. (ii) He said that he was reading a novel. The present continuous shifts back to the past continuous and the pronoun 'I' becomes 'he'.
Q5. Rearrange the following words to form meaningful sentences: (i) birds / the / return / same / to / eaves / every / year (ii) evidence / arranged / until / it / is / silent / is (2 marks) (2 marks)
Answer: (i) The birds return to the same eaves every year. (ii) Evidence is silent until it is arranged.
Q6. Identify and correct the error in each sentence: (i) Neither of the two boys were present. (ii) He is senior than me. (iii) The news are disturbing. (3 marks) (3 marks)
Answer: (i) 'were' should be 'was' — 'neither' is singular and takes a singular verb. (ii) 'than' should be 'to' — adjectives of Latin origin such as senior, junior, superior and inferior take 'to', giving 'He is senior to me.' (iii) 'are' should be 'is' — 'news' is an uncountable noun that is singular despite its final s.
Section C — Literature (40 marks) — 40 marks
Answer all questions with reference to the prescribed textbooks First Flight and Footprints Without Feet. Marks are shown against each question. Answer in your own words; do not copy from the text.
Q1. In 'A Letter to God', why does Lencho write to God, and what does his reaction to the reply reveal about him? (4 marks) (4 marks)
Answer: Lencho writes because the hailstorm has destroyed his entire field of ripe corn, leaving his family with nothing to eat until the next harvest, and he has an unshakeable faith that God will help him if he asks. He requests a hundred pesos to sow again and to live on until the crop comes. When he receives only seventy — the postmaster having made up what he could from his own salary and his employees' — Lencho is not surprised that God has answered, only annoyed at the shortfall, and he concludes that the post office employees must have stolen the rest, calling them 'a bunch of crooks'. This reveals both the completeness of his faith, which never for a moment doubts the source of the money, and its narrowness: he cannot imagine human kindness, and so repays a genuine act of it with suspicion.
Q2. How does Nelson Mandela describe the cost of apartheid to those who imposed it, in 'Long Walk to Freedom'? (4 marks) (4 marks)
Answer: Mandela argues that oppression damages the oppressor as surely as the oppressed. A man who takes away another's freedom, he says, is a prisoner of hatred, locked behind the bars of prejudice and narrow-mindedness, and is therefore not free himself. He observes that the policy of apartheid produced in his country a deeper wound than any war, but it also created a generation of men of extraordinary courage on both sides. He insists that no one is born hating another because of the colour of his skin — people must learn to hate, and if they can learn it, they can be taught love, which comes more naturally to the human heart. His conclusion is that the oppressor must be liberated just as surely as the oppressed.
Q3. What is the central contrast in Robert Frost's 'Dust of Snow', and how does the poem's structure reinforce it? (4 marks) (4 marks)
Answer: The contrast is between the poet's initial mood of despondency and the change worked in him by a trivial natural accident: a crow shakes down a light fall of snow from a hemlock tree onto him. Both the crow and the hemlock are conventionally associated with gloom and even with poison, so the agents of the change are themselves images of darkness — which is the point. The structure reinforces it: the poem is a single sentence spread over two short stanzas, the first describing the action and the second its effect, and the sense runs on across the stanza break without a pause. Because the reader cannot stop until the end, the small event and its consequence are bound together, and the reversal — a saved part of a day he had rued — arrives with the quiet suddenness of the snow itself.
Q4. In 'The Ball Poem', what does the poet mean by 'the epistemology of loss'? Why does he not offer the boy money for another ball? (4 marks) (4 marks)
Answer: The phrase means the knowledge or understanding of loss — the boy is not merely losing a ball but learning, for the first time, what it is to lose something and to know that it will not come back. The poet deliberately refuses to intrude with money or comfort, because a new ball would teach nothing. Loss is a lesson every human being must learn, and it can only be learned by being felt; to buy the boy out of the experience would rob him of the understanding that the experience alone can give. The poet therefore stands aside and lets the boy learn 'how to stand up', because the world is full of possessions and every one of them will one day be lost.
Q5. Compare the attitudes of the narrator and Dr Herriot's patient's owner in 'A Triumph of Surgery', and state what the story satirises. (4 marks) (4 marks)
Answer: Mrs Pumphrey adores her dog Tricki to the point of harming him, ignoring the vet's instructions and feeding him cream cakes, chocolates and malt between meals until he becomes grossly overweight and listless. Dr Herriot, the narrator, is professionally detached and clear-eyed: he sees at once that the dog needs no medicine but simply less food and more exercise, and he takes Tricki into the surgery where a diet of plain food and free running with the other dogs restores him within a fortnight. The story satirises misplaced indulgence — the wealthy owner's sentimentality is a form of self-gratification rather than care — and it gently mocks her willingness to credit a 'triumph of surgery' when in fact nothing was done except to stop overfeeding the animal.
Q6. In 'The Midnight Visitor', how does Ausable differ from the conventional secret agent, and how does he defeat Max? (4 marks) (4 marks)
Answer: Ausable is the opposite of the romantic image of a spy: he is very fat, he speaks with a slight American accent overlaid by French, and his room is a small, unromantic one at the top of a gloomy French hotel — Fowler, the young writer, is openly disappointed by him. He defeats Max not by force but by presence of mind. Finding Max in the room with a pistol, he invents a balcony beneath his window, complains that intruders have used it twice, and mentions that he is expecting the police. When a knock comes at the door — in fact the waiter he had ordered a drink from — Max panics, climbs out of the window onto the balcony that does not exist, and falls. The story's point is that intelligence and nerve are the real weapons of the trade.
Q7. Discuss the theme of courage in 'Footprints Without Feet' or in any one prose lesson you have studied, in about 100–120 words. (8 marks) (8 marks)
Answer: A full-credit answer states a clear thesis, supports it with at least two specific incidents from the chosen text, and closes with an evaluation. Taking 'Footprints Without Feet': Griffin's story shows that ability without moral restraint is not courage but recklessness. He is a brilliant scientist who discovers how to make himself invisible, yet every use he puts the discovery to is an act of cowardice — he sets fire to his landlord's house to escape a debt, he steals from a shop and a clergyman's desk, and he attacks Mrs Hall's household when he is questioned. Real courage would have meant facing the consequences of his experiments openly and publishing his work. Instead invisibility allows him to act without being answerable, and the story suggests that it is accountability, not power, that makes a person behave well. The lesson is that a discovery is neither good nor bad in itself; what matters is the character of the person who holds it.
Q8. 'The value of a poem often lies in what it leaves unsaid.' Discuss with reference to any one poem from First Flight, in about 100–120 words. (8 marks) (8 marks)
Answer: A full-credit answer argues the proposition rather than merely summarising a poem. Taking Frost's 'Fire and Ice': the poem is nine lines long and names two ways the world might end, aligning fire with desire and ice with hate. What it does not do is explain, argue or moralise. It never says that desire consumes a person or that hatred freezes relationships — the reader supplies that, and supplies it more forcefully than any statement could. The understatement of the last line, that ice 'would suffice', is deliberately flat where the subject is annihilation, and the gap between the enormity of the subject and the mildness of the word is where the poem's force lives. Had Frost spelled out his meaning, the poem would have become an opinion; by leaving it unsaid, he makes the reader complete it, and what a reader completes is what a reader believes.
FAQs
What is the weightage of different sections in the English exam?
Reading (20), Writing (20), Grammar (15), and Literature (25) are the main sections.
Are there internal choices in the English exam?
Yes, students can choose to answer either writing or literary texts as per preference in some sections.
How can I improve my writing skills?
Regular reading, practicing letter writing, and analyzing model answers helps improve writing skills.
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