ICSE English Literature SOLVED Specimen Paper 2027 PDF

Specimen Paper for  ICSE 2027 English Literature Solved PDF

If you're searching for the Class 10 ICSE English Literature Specimen Paper 2027, you've landed in the right place — every single question from the paper has been solved and explained right here.

The Council for the Indian School Certificate Examinations (CISCE) has officially released the ICSE Class 10 English Literature Sample Paper 2027 along with specimen papers for all other subjects, ahead of the board exam session 2026-27. These specimen papers give students their first real look at how the upcoming exams will be structured.

Solving the Sample Paper for Class 10 ICSE English Literature 2027 is especially useful if you're appearing for your board exams for the very first time. It helps you understand the exact marking scheme, the kind of questions likely to appear, their difficulty level, and the overall paper pattern — so there are no surprises on exam day.

Whether you're revising composition writing, letter writing, or grammar and comprehension, this ICSE Class 10 English Literature Solved Specimen Paper 2027 walks you through model answers for every section, so you know exactly what examiners expect and how to score full marks.

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ICSE Class 10 English Language SOLVED Specimen Paper 2027

Specimen Paper for Class 10 ICSE English Literature 2027 Solved

ICSE Class 10 English Literature Solved Specimen Paper 2027

Question 1.

Section - A

(i) (d) Caesar's lifeless body covered in blood.

(ii) (a) Caesar’s greed for power and position had resulted in his death.

(iii) (a) hypocritical

(iv) (d) Lepidus

(v) (a) tragic and unnecessary

(vi) (d) frustrated

(vii) (c) The speaker sees both the present and the past.

(viii) (b) 2 and 3

(ix) (d) Statement I is false, but statement II is true.

(x) (b) respect for intelligent life.

(xi) (a) ‘You’re one month on in the middle of May’.

(xii) (c) is unable to recognise his own face

(xiii) (d) 4, 2, 1, 3

(xiv) (a) isolation and alienation

(xv) (c) her legs were useful for more than child-bearing

(xvi) (b) He encourages Martin to use the stairs.

Question 2.

Section - B

(i) Antony says he has come to bury Caesar, not to praise him. He is careful to state that he is not there to praise Caesar, since he has just been granted permission to speak only on the condition that he does not glorify Caesar or accuse the conspirators. This opening reveals Antony to be shrewd and manipulative — he appears to accept Brutus's version of events while, in reality, he is laying the groundwork to turn the crowd against the conspirators.

(ii) Any two of the following conditions Brutus laid down:

That Brutus would speak first; that Antony must say he was speaking with the permission of the conspirators; that Antony would not blame the conspirators for Caesar's death; that Antony should speak well of Caesar; and that Antony would speak from the same pulpit Brutus had used.

Brutus laid down these conditions because he wanted to control the narrative around Caesar's death and prevent the citizens from being provoked into avenging Caesar. He trusted Antony's word and underestimated how skilfully Antony could turn even restricted permission against the conspirators — showing Brutus's honourable but politically naïve nature.

(iii) Two of Antony's arguments:

Caesar brought many captives home to Rome, whose ransoms filled the general coffers; Caesar wept when the poor cried; and Caesar thrice refused the crown offered to him at the feast of Lupercal.

Each time Antony presents one of these facts, he repeats "yet Brutus says he was ambitious, and Brutus is an honourable man" — turning the refrain into cutting irony. The impact on the crowd is dramatic: they are gradually convinced that Caesar was not ambitious, grow angry at the conspirators, and are eventually stirred into a mutinous rage against Brutus and the others.

(iv) Caesar's will — in which he leaves seventy-five drachmas to every Roman citizen and his private gardens for public use — has the greatest impact, because it appeals directly to the self-interest and affection of the common people, turning grief into fury far more effectively than any rational argument could.

(v) These lines mean that people tend to remember only the wrongs a person has done, while the good they did is often forgotten once they are dead. Applied to the play: after his assassination, Brutus's noble motives are overshadowed by the fact that he betrayed and murdered his close friend, so he is remembered chiefly for his disloyalty. Similarly, despite his generosity and military triumphs, Caesar is remembered mainly for his ambition and desire for power, since that is what the conspirators emphasized to justify his killing.

Question 3.

Section-C

(i) Brutus says "No, Cassius, no" to firmly reject the idea of ever being led through the streets of Rome as a captive; his Stoic pride will not allow him to accept such humiliation. He would only be forced into this position if their army were decisively defeated and he were taken prisoner. His words "whether we shall meet again I know not" imply that he is fully aware death is a real possibility for both of them in the coming battle, and he speaks with a resigned, almost fatalistic calm.

(ii) In these lines, Brutus is bidding Cassius a final farewell, aware that this parting may be permanent. In his own words: "Since this may be our last meeting, let us say goodbye for good, forever." These words foreshadow that neither man will survive the battle — both Cassius and Brutus later take their own lives rather than be captured, so this farewell does indeed turn out to be their last.

(iii) Brutus dies by running upon his own sword, which is held for him by his servant Strato, after the battle is lost. This contradicts his lifelong Stoic philosophy, which taught him to accept both joy and suffering with equanimity and not to fear death through weakness. Yet, unable to bear the shame of being paraded as a captive through Rome, Brutus takes the very action his own philosophy should have helped him resist — showing that even his professed ideals give way under the weight of defeat.

(iv) Antony calls Brutus "the noblest Roman of them all" because, unlike the other conspirators, Brutus did not act out of personal envy of Caesar but out of a genuine belief that he was serving the common good of Rome. This reveals Antony's own capacity for nobility and fairness — even as Brutus's enemy, he is generous enough to recognise and honour Brutus's sincerity and integrity.

(v) Cassius reveals that two eagles had accompanied their army all the way from Sardis to Philippi, but that very morning they had flown away, and their place had been taken by ravens, crows and kites — birds of prey associated with death, hovering over the army as if watching them as sickly prey. Cassius, though a follower of the Epicurean philosophy that dismisses belief in omens, admits that the experience has shaken him and that he now partly believes in such portents, showing a rare crack in his usually rational, sceptical outlook.

Question 4.

(i) Martin found the elevator poorly lit, with dirty walls, and uncomfortably small — it made him feel claustrophobic and trapped. The doors closed too quickly for comfort, the elevator shuddered when it moved, and he was constantly afraid it might fall. This tells us that Martin is an anxious, insecure boy who lacks self-confidence and is easily overwhelmed by irrational fears.

(ii) The person who entered was a fat, unpleasant-looking old lady in a green overcoat, with a piggish face, sharp little blue eyes, large fleshy cheeks, no visible chin, and a mass of neck. Her presence terrified Martin and made him feel nervous and threatened, even though she had done nothing overtly menacing.

(iii) Martin felt ashamed of himself because he recognised that being afraid of an old lady was irrational and cowardly, and he did not want to think of himself that way. His reaction was strongly shaped by his father's opinion of him — his father constantly humiliated him, expected him to behave like a "grown man," and clearly regarded Martin as weak, timid and cowardly, which made Martin desperate to prove otherwise, even to himself.

(iv) The story ends with Martin, now on crutches after breaking his leg, left alone in the elevator with the fat lady. The doors close, trapping him, and she turns to him with a smile and says, "Hello, Martin" — even though they have never formally met. The horror lies in this closing image: Martin is completely helpless and unable to escape, and the woman's uncanny knowledge of his name suggests she has been watching or stalking him all along, leaving the reader with a chilling, unresolved sense of danger.

(v) Martin was nervous because he had broken his leg and was on crutches, which meant that if the sinister lady got into the elevator with him, he would have no way of escaping or defending himself. Two words that capture the story's ending well are "suspenseful" and "horrifying," since Sleator deliberately leaves the reader in a state of dread without confirming what happens to Martin next.

Question 5.

(i) M. Hamel was the schoolteacher of the village school in Alsace who had taught French there for forty years. The character trait many students find most appealing is his deep devotion to his students and his language even on his final day of teaching — instead of scolding Franz for being late, he responds with patience and gentleness, revealing his essential kindness.

(ii) Besides M. Hamel and the students, the elderly people of the village were also present in the classroom that day. They likely felt deep respect and gratitude for M. Hamel's decades of service to the village, along with shame at not having valued their own language and education enough when they had the chance, and deep regret at having neglected their schooling in the past.

(iii) When Franz arrived late, he found the classroom unusually and unexpectedly quiet — normally there would be a great deal of noise and bustle as lessons began, with desks banging and students getting settled, but that morning everything was calm and still, and all the students were already seated in their places.

(iv) Franz's biggest regret is that he never seriously applied himself to learning French when he had the opportunity, and now, with the new order banning French from being taught, he feels he will never get the chance to learn it properly again. Many students relate to Franz because, like him, they too have sometimes taken their lessons and teachers for granted, being inattentive or finding schoolwork boring until it was too late to make up for lost time.

(v) The expression "thunder-clap" suggests a feeling of sudden shock and stunned disbelief. Used in a sentence: "The news of his sudden dismissal came to him like a thunder-clap, leaving him speechless." One important lesson M. Hamel taught his students during his last lesson was the importance of loving and valuing one's own mother tongue, telling them that when a people are enslaved, as long as they hold fast to their own language, it is as though they hold the key to their own prison. This lesson stands out because it captures the deeper political and emotional message of the entire story — that language is inseparable from identity and freedom.

Question 6.

(i) At the beginning of the poem, King Francis, his nobles and the court ladies are seated together to watch a fight between lions in a pit below, as a grand spectacle. Among the onlookers is Count de Lorge, who sits sighing, clearly more absorbed in gazing at his beloved than in the fight itself.

(ii) Leigh Hunt uses striking visual images such as the lions' "laughing jaws," their fierce glares, blows exchanged "like beams," the beasts rolling over one another, and bloody foam being "whisked through the air" to make the ferocity of the fight vivid to the reader. He complements this with sound imagery — the lions' roars, a "stifled roar," and a "thunderous smother" — which together create a powerful, almost cinematic sense of danger and violence in the pit.

(iii) The "beauteous lively dame" is Count de Lorge's beloved. She deliberately drops her glove into the lions' pit, setting him a test to prove his love for her by retrieving it from among the dangerous beasts. She does this out of vanity — to test and prove de Lorge's devotion to her and to win admiration and glory for herself, having overheard the King remark, "Faith, gentlemen, we're better here than there," which gave her the idea for this cruel display.

(iv) King Francis applauds Count de Lorge's action of flinging the glove back into the lady's face rather than presenting it to her as a token of his love. Students may reasonably argue that de Lorge behaves this way because he is disillusioned with her once he realises her vanity and cunning motive — he understands that she never truly loved him but merely wished to use him to prove her power over him, and he flings the glove at her to humiliate and shame her in return.

(v) "Smiling lips" and "sharp bright eyes" suggest an artificial, fake smile that hides no real warmth, paired with shrewd, calculating eyes — together painting the lady as outwardly charming but inwardly cold and manipulative.

(Our Personal response for the title — e.g., "Love Put to the Test" or "The Price of Vanity," with a suitable justification linking the title to the poem's central conflict between true love and vain self-display.)

For example, if you choose "The Price of Vanity" as the title, below is the justification for that:

Justification: The poem's central turning point is not the lion pit itself but the lady's vain need to test her lover's devotion for her own glory and amusement. She risks Count de Lorge's life purely to be admired by the watching court, and it is this vanity — not the lions — that ultimately costs her his love, since he flings the glove back at her in disgust once he sees through her motive. The title "The Price of Vanity" captures this irony: her moment of triumph, watching him retrieve the glove, becomes the very thing that loses her his affection, showing that her vanity is paid for at the cost of the love she was trying to prove.

If you pick "Love Put to the Test", the justification would run differently:

Justification: The poem builds around a "test" the lady sets for her lover — and the real test turns out not to be his courage but the sincerity of his love for her, and by extension, the sincerity of hers for him. Count de Lorge passes his test by proving he is brave enough to face the lions, but she fails hers by revealing that she valued spectacle and admiration over his safety and dignity. The title works well because it frames the whole poem as a single dramatic "test" with two very different results for the two lovers.

Question 7.

(i) The narrator first imagined the speck to be a mere particle of dust blown onto his page by his own breath. His use of the words "speck" and "mite" emphasizes just how small and seemingly insignificant the creature is — yet by calling it a "mite," he also acknowledges, even before fully realising it, that it is in fact a tiny living creature rather than lifeless dust.

(ii) The narrator was writing when he first spotted the speck. Two words from the poem that support this are "paper" and "ink" (or "manuscript" / "pen"), which clearly place him at his writing desk at the moment of the encounter.

(iii) The narrator realises he is dealing with "an intelligence" when the mite responds purposefully to the danger around it — it pauses as if suspicious of his pen, races about wildly, shows what seems like loathing for the taste or smell of ink, runs about in apparent terror, and creeps cunningly to try and survive. These behaviours convince him that the creature is not moving randomly but is acting with awareness and a will to live.

(iv) The mite's movements — running with apparent terror, racing, crawling, faltering, and clearly trying to escape and avoid death — lead the narrator to conclude that it must have feet, since only a creature capable of deliberate, purposeful locomotion could behave in this way.

(v) The narrator's initial response was to want to crush or stop the mite, perhaps with his pen or a drop of ink. However, he eventually decides to let it lie there undisturbed until it falls asleep, sparing its life. He makes this decision out of respect for the intelligence and will to survive shown by even so small a creature — recognising that it is harmless and possesses a mind and inclinations of its own. One word that captures the poem's tone well is "reflective" (or "philosophical" / "meditative").

We hope this ICSE Class 10 English Literature Solved Specimen Paper 2027 helped you understand the paper pattern and prepare with more confidence for your board exams.

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