Last verified: 12 November 2026. The exam pattern below is ✅ CONFIRMED from the NTA AISSEE 2027 Information Bulletin: Class 6 English (Language) is 25 questions for 50 marks; Class 9 English is 25 questions for 50 marks; the exam is on 31 January 2027, with no negative marking. The root-word method and the word lists in this article are teaching guidance, not exam content — nobody outside NTA knows the 2027 paper.
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Last year, a parent showed me her daughter’s vocabulary notebook. Two hundred words, copied neatly from a guidebook, each with a meaning and a Hindi translation. The child had spent a month on it. I asked her what “benevolent” meant. She stared at the ceiling, then at me, then back at the ceiling. She had written the word twelve times. She could not tell me what it meant.
Here is the thing — that is not the child’s fault. It is the method’s fault. A word memorised alone, with no hook and no family, is a loose coin. It falls out of the pocket within days.
There is a better way, and it is older than any guidebook. Learn words by their roots and families. One root, ten words. One family, one story.
Take the root port, which means “to carry”. Now watch what happens:
Five words, one idea, zero memorising. Your child did not learn five words — they learned one root and then read five words that were already built from it. That is the whole trick, and it works on almost every “difficult” word in the Class 6 and Class 9 papers.
Start here. These ten roots show up again and again in school English and in past AISSEE papers. Learn one family a week, and in ten weeks your child owns roughly a hundred words.
| Root | Meaning | Words your child now owns | How to remember it |
|---|---|---|---|
| dict | to say, to speak | dictate, predict, dictionary, contradict, verdict | A dictionary says what words mean |
| port | to carry | transport, import, export, portable, support | A porter carries bags |
| scrib / script | to write | describe, prescribe, manuscript, inscription, subscription | A script is something written |
| ject | to throw | project, reject, inject, subject, eject | Throw a ball — that’s a projectile |
| graph | to write, to draw | autograph, photograph, biography, geography, paragraph | A photograph is drawn by light |
| tele | far away | telephone, television, telescope, telegram, teleport | A telescope sees far away |
| bio | life | biology, biography, antibiotic, biosphere, symbiotic | Biology is the study of life |
| chron | time | chronological, chronic, synchronise, chronicle | A chronometer measures time |
| aud | to hear | audience, audible, auditorium, audio, audition | An audience listens |
| vis / spec | to see | visible, vision, inspect, respect, spectator | A spectator watches |
One honest note: these are standard English roots, the kind taught in every Class 6 English textbook. Nothing here is a secret. The value is not in the table — it is in using it the way the plan below says, with your child making their own sentences for each word.
There are about 80 days left until 31 January 2027. That is plenty — if you start now and keep it small.
Weeks 1–2: one root family per week. Monday, learn the root and five words from the table above. Tuesday to Friday, add one new word from the same family each day. Saturday, a 10-minute quiz: you say the word, they say the meaning, in their own words, not the book’s. Sunday off.
Weeks 3–6: roots plus reading. Keep one new root family a week, but now add five words a week from whatever your child is reading — their English textbook, a newspaper headline, a storybook. Words met in real reading stick twice as well as words met in a list, because they arrive with a sentence attached.
Weeks 7–10: revision, not new words. Stop adding new roots. Every word learned so far gets revised on a simple schedule — after 1 day, after 3 days, after a week, after a month. Use the last three weeks for mock-test vocabulary: every synonym or antonym your child gets wrong in a mock goes straight into the notebook, with its root.
Daily, all 80 days: 10 minutes, never more. Five minutes in the morning (two new words, one sentence each), five minutes at night (revise yesterday’s two). Ten words a day sounds small. Over 80 days it is 800 words.
Buy a thin notebook and divide every page into four columns:
That fourth column is the whole game. A child who writes “My grandmother’s verdict on my haircut was final” will never forget “verdict”. A child who copies “verdict — a decision” will forget it by Thursday. The sentence is the hook. Insist on it, even when it slows things down — especially when it slows things down.
And one rule for parents: never test your child by asking for the dictionary meaning. Ask for the sentence. “Use ‘audible’ in a sentence about our house” is a real test. “What does audible mean?” is a memory trick, and memory tricks fail under exam pressure.
Most parents think vocabulary lives in the English section, and they are mostly right — synonyms, antonyms, one-word substitutions and word meanings in a passage are the usual forms. But vocabulary quietly shows up elsewhere too.
In the Intelligence section, a question is sometimes only hard because of one word. In GK, a child who misreads “unanimous” or “consecutive” can lose a mark they actually knew the answer to. And in Class 9, where the English section is 25 questions for 50 marks, the vocabulary questions are among the cheapest marks available — no calculation, no passage to read, just one word you either know or you don’t.
So the plan is not “study vocabulary for English”. The plan is “build a vocabulary that lifts the whole paper”.
Stick it next to the study table, and tick it together on Sunday evening. Small rituals beat big resolutions — every time.
How many vocabulary marks are there in the AISSEE English paper?
Vocabulary is not a separate section. In Class 6, English is one paper of 25 questions for 50 marks, and in Class 9 the English section is also 25 questions for 50 marks. Vocabulary appears inside it as synonyms, antonyms, one-word substitutions and word meanings in context — typically a handful of questions, but they are among the quickest marks in the whole paper if your child knows the words.
Is learning root words really faster than memorising word lists?
Yes, because one root unlocks a whole family. Learn ‘port’ (to carry) once and you can work out transport, import, export, portable and support. Ten roots give you roughly a hundred words. A flat list of a hundred words, memorised one by one, is forgotten in days because the words have nothing holding them together.
How many words should my child learn each day for AISSEE 2027?
Ten a day is the right pace for the final 80 days — five from a root family and five from reading. That is about 800 words by exam day. Twenty a day collapses within a week; five a day is too slow.
Should my child use a dictionary or an app for vocabulary?
A small notebook beats an app at this age. Write the word, its root, one meaning in your child’s own words, and one sentence they made up themselves. The act of writing the sentence is what moves the word from short-term memory into real use. Apps are fine for revision quizzes, not as the main method.
What if my child keeps forgetting words they learned last month?
That is normal — forgetting is part of learning, not a failure. The fix is spaced revision: revise each word after 1 day, then after 3 days, then after a week, then after a month. A word revised four times on that schedule is very hard to forget. The weekly plan in this article builds those revision slots in.
Does vocabulary help in sections other than English?
Yes. The Intelligence section often hides a vocabulary trap — a question that is easy if you know one word and impossible if you do not — and the GK section rewards children who can read a question properly. A strong vocabulary quietly lifts the whole paper, not just English.
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