Grade 10
Grade 10 English Online Tutoring
Live online Grade 10 English classes. Precis writing, world literature, factual and persuasive texts, connectives and the grammar the board paper rewards.
The short answer
Grade 10 English adds one genuinely new demand: precis. Alongside it sit world literature, factual and persuasive texts, newspaper and magazine articles, connectives and cohesion, and the tenses and sentence patterns carried forward from Grade 9. Learning Loft teaches it online in groups of at most five.
What we cover in Grade 10 English
- Precis reading and precis writing
- Literature from around the world
- Persuasive and informative texts
- Factual writing: advertisements, timetables, flowcharts, tables and maps
- Newspaper and magazine articles
- Vocabulary: prefixes, suffixes, abbreviations and acronyms
- Transitive and intransitive verbs, and modals used for impact
- Adjectives, degrees of adverbs and imperatives
- Connectives and cohesion in extended writing
- All tenses, sentence patterns, and direct and indirect speech
By the end of the year
- Write a precis that keeps every main idea of a passage, in the student's own words and within the word limit.
- Produce factual and persuasive texts — articles, advertisements, flowcharts and tables — for a stated audience.
- Read literature from around the world and explain the writer's purpose, tone and point of view.
Where students get stuck
- Precis writing — lifting whole sentences from the passage instead of summarising in their own words, and overshooting the word limit.
- Modals and conditionals used inconsistently in formal writing, so an argument that should be firm reads as tentative.
Precis is the new demand of the year
It is the one item on the Grade 10 paper a student has genuinely not met before. The national curriculum introduces both precis reading and precis writing at this grade and does not set them at Grade 9.
It is also harder than it looks, because it tests two things at once: deciding what the passage is actually about, and saying it in language that is not the passage's. Students who are good at English often score badly at first, because their instinct is to keep the writer's best sentences.
- Read once for the argument, not for the detail
- Mark the main idea of each paragraph, and nothing else
- Write from those marks, with the passage turned over
- Count the words, then cut — the first draft is always too long
What carries over from Grade 9
The tenses, complex sentences and direct and indirect speech do not go away; they stop being taught and start being assumed. A student who never secured indirect speech last year now loses those marks silently, because nothing on the timetable will revisit it.
Grade 10 adds the connective and cohesion work that makes extended writing hold together — the difference between four correct paragraphs and one argument.
Reading the question properly
A large share of the English marks lost at this level are lost before any writing happens. The question names a form, an audience and a purpose, and an answer that ignores one of the three is capped however well it is written.
We spend deliberate time on that: underline the form, underline the audience, decide the register, then write. It takes ninety seconds and it is the highest-value ninety seconds on the paper.
Students on GCSE and IGCSE
The skills overlap closely. Summary writing on an IGCSE English paper is precis under another name, and directed writing is the same audience-and-purpose task.
The mark schemes do not overlap. Cambridge and the UK boards reward different things in the wording of a response, so we teach against the specification the student is entered for and mark to that board's criteria rather than to a general standard.
- Where precis reading and precis writing enter the national curriculum; they do not appear at Grade 9
- Grade 10Where precis reading and precis writing enter the national curriculum; they do not appear at Grade 9[1]
- Session length in the examination year
- 60–90 minSession length in the examination year
- Maximum students in a group
- 5Maximum students in a group
Common questions
What is in the Grade 10 (Matric) English syllabus?
Precis reading and precis writing, literature from around the world, persuasive and informative texts, factual writing including advertisements and flowcharts, newspaper and magazine articles, prefixes and suffixes, transitive and intransitive verbs, modals, connectives, and the full tense system.
How do you teach precis writing?
By separating the two skills. First, finding the main idea of each paragraph and nothing more; then writing from those notes with the passage turned over, so the student cannot copy. Almost every early precis fails because the passage stayed face up.
My child writes well but scores badly. Why?
Usually because the answer does not do what the question asked. Board questions specify a form, an audience and a purpose, and marks are capped when one is missed, regardless of the quality of the prose. It is a reading problem more often than a writing problem.
Is Grade 10 English the same as IGCSE English?
The skills are close — summary, directed writing and comprehension appear in both. The mark schemes are not, and the wording that earns credit differs between boards. We teach against the specification the student is entered for and mark to its criteria.
Sources
- National Curriculum of Pakistan: English progression grid, Grades 1–12 — National Curriculum Council, Ministry of Federal Education and Professional Training
- English curriculum guidelines, Grade 10 — National Curriculum Council, Ministry of Federal Education and Professional Training
- National curriculum in England: English programmes of study — Department for Education
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