ICSE Class 11 English Language Sample Paper for Half-Yearly Exam 2025; Download Free PDF

Question No.

TIME: 3 Hrs 15 Mins

1

Write a composition (in approximately 400 - 450 words) on any one of the following subjects: [20]

(You are reminded that you will be rewarded for orderly and coherent presentation of material, use of

appropriate style and general accuracy of spelling, punctuation and grammar.)

i) Colour

ii) Write an original short story beginning with the words :

I knew at once that the blue envelope was from her. My hands trembled as I reached for it

.................

iii)  ‘Relatives are a tedious and curious pack of people’. Express your views on this topic.

iv) You were waiting at the ATM booth of Focus Bank, when a white car drew up and four men with

masks rushed into the bank. Narrate how an attempted bank robbery was foiled by an alert

security guard.

v) ‘Today’s youth is more practical and less swayed by emotions’. Argue For or Against the given

statement.

vi) A foreigner will be visiting you for a fortnight and you wish to introduce him/her to ‘Incredible India’

during that time. Give an account of your plans.

2

i) As the President of the Environment Club of your school, you have been given the responsibility of

organizing a workshop on ‘Conservation of Energy’. Write a proposal in not more than 150 words on the

steps you would take to successfully organize this workshop. [10]

ii) Write an article for your school magazine on a competition that was recently held in your school. Write

the article in about 300 words using the points given below: [15]

Name of the competition – nature of event – organizers – number of participants – chief guest – judges –

quality of the competition – criteria for judgement – winners – overall experience.                        

3

Answer subparts (i), (ii) and (iii).

(i) In the following sentences, replace the INCORRECT underlined words to make the sentence

meaningful and grammatically correct (Do not write the sentence.) [5]

(a) After the argument, his friends turned for him.

(b) Ramesh turned against his father for help.

(c) The Headmaster will look for the cheating case.

(d) I look in to my grandfather for what he has achieved.

(e) She takes into her mother; she has her lovely green eyes.

(f) Ramesh has taken for computers like a duck to water.

(g) Will you entrust him for that message’?

(h) He is dishonest; you must not entrust any important job on him.

(i) Do not put away till tomorrow what you can do today.

(j) I put on at my friend’s house for the night.

(ii) Fill in the blanks in the passage given below with the appropriate form of the verb given in brackets.

Do not write the passage, but write the verbs in the correct order. [5]

I ___________ (1) (realize) that I ___________ (2) (know) one of the two men by sight, and I ___________

(3) (spend) a few seconds thinking why he ___________ (4) (seek) me out on a Sunday afternoon. During

this pause, three small boys ___________ (5) (walk) up the passage from the house behind me,

___________ (6) (tread) away around me and the two men outside, and silently ___________

___________ (7) (climb) like cats up into a tree in the middle of the lawn outside. There, the three figures

___________ (8) (rest), ___________ (9) (become) immobile, ___________ (10) (lie) on their stomachs,

deep in a secret game.

(iii) Rewrite the following sentences according to the instructions given after each of them in the brackets.                                                    [5]

a) I am sorry I am unable to accompany you. (Begin: I regret my .......................)

b) The hoarding has led to the rise in the prices of food grains. (Begin: The prices of food grains...........)

c) On seeing the rat, she shrieked. (Begin: No sooner...............)

d) The boss said, “What an extraordinary success!” (Begin : The boss exclaimed .......................)

e) The school team lost the cricket match although the captain scored a century.

(Begin: Despite...........)

4

Read the passage given below and answer the questions (i), (ii) and (iii) that follow:

1. For two or three minutes he seemed content to hold his position, while the sweat broke out behind my

neck and began to run in streams down my back, sticking the light nylon flying suit to my skin.

2. He pulled out at three hundred feet. The fog was still below us. Probably the fog bank was only from the ground to two hundred feet up, but that was more than enough to prevent a plane from landing without guidance. I could imagine the stream of instructions coming from the radar hut into the earphones of the man flying beside me, eighty feet away. I kept my eyes on him, following as closely as possible, afraid of losing sight for an instant, watching for his every hand-signal. Two minutes later he held up his clenched left fist in the window, then opened the fist to display all five fingers against the glass, indicating that I should lower the undercarriage. I moved the lever downwards and felt the dull thunk as all three wheels went down, happily powered by hydraulic pressure and not dependent on the failed electrical system.

3. Inside the cockpit of the World War II Mosquito plane, I could make out against the light of the moon, the muffled head of its pilot and the twin circles of his goggles as he looked out of the side window towards me. Carefully he raised his right hand till I could see it in the window, fingers straight, palm downwards. He jabbed the fingers forward and down, meaning that we were going to descend and that I should follow him.

4. My plane stopped trembling and plunged ahead of the Mosquito. I pulled back on the throttle, hearing the engine die to a low whistle, and the other pilot was back beside me. We were diving straight towards the shrouded land. I glanced at my altimeter: two thousand feet, still diving.

5. Quite suddenly he straightened out, so fast I almost lost him. I caught him a second later and saw his left hand flash the dive signal to me. Then he dipped towards the fog bank, I followed, and we were in it, a shallow, flat descent, but a descent nevertheless, and from a mere hundred feet, towards nothing.

6. I nodded and quickly brought up my own left hand so he could see it, first pointing forwards to my own control panel with one forefinger, and then holding up my five spread fingers. Finally, I drew my hand across my throat. By common agreement this sign meant that I had only five minutes fuel left, and then my engine would cut out. I saw the muffled, goggled, oxygen-masked head nod in understanding, and then we were heading downwards towards the sheet of fog.

7. The pilot of the shepherd aircraft pointed down again, for another descent. I managed to flick a glance at my fuel gauge: it was on zero, flickering feebly. For God’s sake, hurry up, I prayed, for if my fuel failed me now there would be no time to climb to the minimum five hundred feet needed for bailing out. A jet fighter at one hundred feet, without an engine is a death-trap with no chances for survival.

i) Describe how the pilot of the Mosquito aircraft guided the narrator to land, in not more than 100 words

(Paragraphs 3 to 7). Failure to keep within the word limit will be penalized. [8]

ii) Answer the following questions in your own words as briefly as possible:

1) What was the first instruction of the pilot of the Mosquito plane?     [2]

2) How did the other pilot let the narrator know that the wheels had to be lowered?                                                                                       [2]

3) Why did the narrator begin to pray towards the end?         [2]

iii) For each of the words given below, choose the correct sentence that uses the same word

unchanged in spelling, but with a different meaning from that which it carries in the passage: [3]

1) land

A) It is cheaper to drill on land than at sea.

B) The treaty has led to a dramatic reduction in the number of land - based missiles in Europe.

C) This sort of land is not good for growing potatoes.

D)You can land the plane in water during emergency.

2) hand

A) The CBI was handed the report by the State Government.

B) It is anticipated that the terrorists have a hand in the Mumbai blasts.

C) I have put my hands in my pocket to keep them warm.

D) The baby gripped my finger with her tiny hand.

3) Palm

A) She was clutching a small coin in the palm of her hand.

B) The island has long golden beaches fringed by palm trees.

C) She sighed and rested her chin in the palm of her hand.

D) In the tent of an old gypsy woman was reading palms.

CHECK: ICSE Class 11 English Language Sample Paper for Half-Yearly Exam 2025; Download Free PDF