SilverZone Foundation · English · Class 8
International Olympiad of English Language (iOEL) Class 8: syllabus, dates and exam pattern (2026–27)
Everything you need in one place — the exact NCERT chapters this paper tests, its published exam dates, the registration window, and the full marking scheme. Updated for the 2026–27 session.
Last verified against SilverZone Foundation's own site on 13 September 2026. Exam dates re-checked on 22 October 2026.
2026–27 exam dates
Date 1
21 October 2026
Date 2
26 November 2026
Date 3
10 December 2026
SilverZone publishes these under the heading "Tentative Examination Schedule for the year 2026-27" — the body's own dates, but not marked final, so treat them as indicative until your school confirms. Two things on SilverZone's own pages do not line up, and both are worth asking your coordinator about. The schedule lists three dates while the iOEL page still says "the school may opt from the two dates suggested". And from 11 September 2026 SilverZone's exam-date data also lists an online iOEL sitting on 12 December 2026, which names no classes; online there describes how the paper is taken, not who registers, and entry is still through the school.
SilverZone also lists an online-mode sitting of iOEL on 12 December 2026, under the same 31 October 2026 registration cutoff (moved from 30 September 2026). It was added to SilverZone's own exam-date data on 11 September 2026; the dates above are its offline sittings.
Registration: SilverZone publishes one registration cutoff covering every paper it runs, iOEL included: 31 October 2026, on the same schedule it heads "Tentative Examination Schedule." It was 30 September 2026 until SilverZone moved it: on 1 October 2026 the body's own exam-date endpoint still returned 30 September 2026 on all 34 of its records, and when we re-read it on 14 October 2026 every one returned 31 October 2026, with no notice of the change on the site. That is the second time this season SilverZone has replaced its cutoff only after the earlier date had gone by: the endpoint returned 31 August 2026 on every read from 18 August to 1 September 2026, and 30 September 2026 from 2 September. So treat 31 October as SilverZone's current date rather than a settled one, in either direction. If your school has not registered, ask your coordinator to confirm with SilverZone, at info@silverzone.org, which sitting of iOEL an entry made now would be for. Registration is through participating schools by default, so the cutoff binds the school rather than the family. SilverZone also runs an individual registration form at r.silverzone.org; which papers it offers, and what closing date applies to it, we have not been able to confirm.
The deadline is set by your school, not by you
Most parents find the exam date and assume they have until then. The registration window closes long before it, and for some papers it has already started closing. Here is how it actually works.
- Your school registers your child and your school picks which of the 2–3 dates the class sits. The family does not choose.
- For SOF papers, registrations must reach SOF exactly 30 days before that chosen date — and once the school has chosen, the date cannot be changed.
- Most bodies register through the school. These do not have to: CREST (online, no published cutoff), Unified Council — directly for NSTSE itself at ₹350 against ₹150 through a school, and on three online sittings, NSTSE-Online, UIMO-Online and UIEO-Online, at ₹354 each including GST — Indian Talent Olympiad on its individual online route (its own later dates — Slot 1 closes 30 October), and Humming Bird (online, ₹150 a subject, no published cutoff — its two dates are picked as you register). CREST is the simplest of them. SilverZone also runs an individual registration form alongside its default school route; which papers it offers we have not been able to confirm.
Closing next
SOF IHO (Hindi) — if your school picks 23 November 2026
Registrations must reach SOF by 24 October 2026
SOF IMO (Maths) — if your school picks 26 November 2026
Registrations must reach SOF by 27 October 2026
Indian Talent Olympiad (ITO) — Individual online route — Slot 1
Registration closes 30 October 2026
SilverZone Foundation — Every SilverZone paper
Registration closes 31 October 2026
The body publishes this date but has not marked it final — confirm with your school before treating it as fixed.
Indian Talent Olympiad (ITO) — School route — Set B (extended twice, from 10 October)
Registration closes 31 October 2026
Or read the full calendar on the site — no sign-up
Every deadline in this box was re-read against the exam body's own website on or after 22 October 2026. Each table carries its own source link and its own date. Bodies do move dates, so check against the body's own site before you act on one.
Exam pattern
How the iOEL paper is structured
| Section | Questions | Marks per question | Section total |
|---|---|---|---|
| Correct Application of Grammar | 12 | 2.5 | 30 |
| Vocabulary Knowledge | 8 | 2.5 | 20 |
| Reading and Comprehension Skill | 3 | 2.5 | 7.5 |
| Writing and Speaking Ability | 7 | 2.5 | 17.5 |
| Brilliance Zone | 5 | 5 | 25 |
| Total | 35 questions | — | 100 marks · 40 minutes |
Class 8 iOEL is the Class 7 paper with one addition, and it is worth saying plainly rather than dressing up. SilverZone's Class 8 table has the same five sections at the same sizes — 12, 8, 3, 7 and 5 questions — the same marks, and the same named topics in every section but one: Vocabulary Knowledge adds homonyms, so seven word-level topics now share the same eight questions. A child who sat iOEL in Class 7 is sitting a paper of the same shape with slightly more ground behind the vocabulary section. The rest carries over from Class 7 unchanged. Grammar and vocabulary together are 50 of the 100 marks, against 7.5 for reading comprehension. The Brilliance Zone is five questions at 5 marks each, one seventh of the questions carrying a quarter of the paper. And 35 questions in 40 minutes is about 69 seconds a question. Class 8 is also the last year of that clock: SilverZone's own iOEL structure table gives Classes 6 to 8 thirty-five questions and forty minutes, and moves Classes 9 to 12 to forty questions and fifty minutes. One caution about the body's own pages: the iOEL overview prints two section lists labelled "(For Classes III-VI)" and "(For Classes VII-XII)", and its class-wise tables do not match them. Where they disagree, the class-wise table is the one to trust, and it is the one this page is built from.
SilverZone publishes no current-year/previous-year split for iOEL, so nothing is claimed here. The class-wise topic table is the whole of what the body publishes about what this paper contains.
Syllabus
English syllabus mapped to NCERT Poorvi (Class 8, 2026-27)
Ch 1. The Wit that Won Hearts
Olympiad syllabus label: Reading and Comprehension Skill — prose
Ch 2. A Concrete Example
Olympiad syllabus label: Reading and Comprehension Skill — prose
Ch 3. Wisdom Paves the Way
Olympiad syllabus label: Reading and Comprehension Skill — prose; Writing and Speaking Ability — paragraph writing
Ch 4. A Tale of Valour: Major Somnath Sharma and the Battle of Badgam
Olympiad syllabus label: Reading and Comprehension Skill — biographical account
Ch 5. Somebody's Mother
Olympiad syllabus label: Reading and Comprehension Skill — poetry
Ch 6. Verghese Kurien — I Too Had A Dream
Olympiad syllabus label: Reading and Comprehension Skill — autobiographical prose; Writing and Speaking Ability — paragraph writing
Ch 7. The Case of the Fifth Word
Olympiad syllabus label: Reading and Comprehension Skill — inference in a mystery story
Ch 8. The Magic Brush of Dreams
Olympiad syllabus label: Reading and Comprehension Skill — prose
Ch 9. Spectacular Wonders
Olympiad syllabus label: Reading and Comprehension Skill — descriptive prose; Vocabulary Knowledge — vocabulary in context
Ch 10. The Cherry Tree
Olympiad syllabus label: Reading and Comprehension Skill — narrative prose; Vocabulary Knowledge — vocabulary in context
Ch 11. Harvest Hymn
Olympiad syllabus label: Reading and Comprehension Skill — poetry
Ch 12. Waiting for the Rain
Olympiad syllabus label: Reading and Comprehension Skill — narrative and setting
Ch 13. Feathered Friend
Olympiad syllabus label: Reading and Comprehension Skill — science fiction; Vocabulary Knowledge — vocabulary in context
Ch 14. Magnifying Glass
Olympiad syllabus label: Reading and Comprehension Skill — informational prose; Vocabulary Knowledge — vocabulary in context
Ch 15. Bibha Chowdhuri: The Beam of Light that Lit the Path for Women in Indian Science
Olympiad syllabus label: Reading and Comprehension Skill — biography
As at Class 7, the book and the paper barely meet. Poorvi Class 8 is fifteen reading pieces, and what it feeds is the 7.5-mark comprehension section. The 50 marks of grammar and vocabulary come from outside the textbook, so a good English report card predicts very little about this paper. Now our own material, measured against SilverZone's Class 8 list, because a page that names the school book's gap and hides ours is not worth reading. Grammar is where we are strongest at Grade 8: of the eight grammar topics SilverZone names, our curator taxonomy has Grade 8 rows for parts of speech, articles and determiners, modals, subject-verb agreement and tense, and treats error finding as a question format built on those rows. Gerund and infinitive we do not cover at Grade 6, 7 or 8, and we say so. Vocabulary is the plainest gap: SilverZone names jumbled words, synonyms, antonyms, homonyms, one-word substitution, spelling and idioms for 20 of the 100 marks, and not one of those seven has a Grade 8 row in our taxonomy. Our four Grade 8 vocabulary rows are word lists tied to four Poorvi chapters, which is real reading work and not word-relationship practice. The one topic SilverZone adds at Class 8, homonyms, sits in our Grade 6 material. In writing we carry paragraph and story writing, formal letters, reported speech, voice and sentence types at Grade 8, and have no Grade 8 row for notices, jumbled sentences, sequencing sentences, question tags, sentence improvement, choosing a filler or cloze. As at every class, the Brilliance Zone names no topics on any SilverZone table, so nothing about its content is published by anyone.
Try it yourself
Today's english question
Practice
Practice in the iOEL format
No — OlympAI does not publish a practice paper for this exam. SilverZone publishes this paper’s structure, but OlympAI cannot yet place a question in the section the body names: our English topics carry one code for its four subject sections, and its Reading section needs passages we do not hold.
Frequently asked questions
Related guides
Other olympiad syllabus guides
SilverZone Foundation · Class 7
iOEL Class 7 — english syllabus, dates and pattern
SilverZone Foundation · Class 6
iOEL Class 6 — english syllabus, dates and pattern
Indian Talent Olympiad (ITO) · Class 8
ITO-S Class 8 — science syllabus, dates and pattern
Indian Talent Olympiad (ITO) · Class 8
ITO-H Class 8 — hindi syllabus, dates and pattern
Keep reading
Guides that answer the next question
Which olympiad should my Class 8 child take?
The Class 8 paper list is the same 25 papers offered at Class 6 and Class 7. What changes is that the bodies stop agreeing on what Class 8 means — one paper we mapped chapter by chapter is roughly half last year’s book. The routes, the dates and the syllabus catch, read off each body on 8 September 2026.
SOF IEO vs SilverZone iOEL: which English olympiad to pick
Both English olympiads give exactly half their marks to word and grammar knowledge, and exactly a quarter to a higher-order section. Where they part company is the other quarter: SOF IEO spends it on reading, SilverZone iOEL spends almost the same amount on writing and speaking instead. Here is the side-by-side for Classes 6, 7 and 8, the two registration dates that matter this week, and how to tell which paper suits your child.
Or see every 2026-27 exam date and registration cutoff in one table, or browse all the papers we cover.
Practice these exact chapters, free
Free forever: 3 practice quizzes a day in each subject, 10 olympiad-pattern questions each, and 5 with your choice of length and difficulty on OlympAI PRO — for Class 8 english, generated from the same NCERT chapters above and written to the shape of the real olympiad papers, then automatically checked before they can be served.
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