Grade 9English Language

What your child actually learns this year

Every strand and every topic in the Grade 9 English Language curriculum, exactly as the Kenya Institute of Curriculum Development sets it out. Written so you can read it in one sitting, without a teaching qualification.

1Listening and SpeakingFifteen topics on the half of English that leaves no written record: how your child listens, and how they sound.15 topics·75 questions

  • Polite Language

    4 skills

  • Oral Literature: Short Forms

    4 skills

  • Listening Comprehension (Grade Appropriate Texts)

    3 skills

  • Selective Listening

    3 skills

  • Pronunciation

    3 skills

  • Conversational Skills: Negotiation Skills

    3 skills

  • Listening Comprehension: Listening for Detail

    3 skills

  • Oral Poetry

    3 skills

  • Diphthongs and Sentence Stress

    3 skills

  • Impromptu Speeches

    3 skills

  • Conversation Skills: Job Interviews

    3 skills

  • Listening to Respond: Expressing Feelings

    3 skills

  • Extensive Listening: Speeches

    3 skills

  • Intonation in Sentences: Question Tags

    4 skills

  • Oral Reports: News (Role Play)

    4 skills
2ReadingTwenty-seven topics, the largest strand in the subject. Class readers, poetry, plays and reading for information, each read a different way.27 topics·160 questions

  • Independent Reading: Grade Appropriate Text

    4 skills

  • Play: Structure and Setting (Class Reader)

    3 skills

  • Intensive Reading: Simple Poems

    3 skills

  • Intensive Reading: Plot (Class Reader)

    3 skills

  • Reading for Information and Meaning

    3 skills

  • Poems: Structure

    4 skills

  • Intensive Reading

    6 skills

  • Play: Identification of Characters (Class Reader)

    4 skills

  • Reference Materials: Dictionary, Thesaurus, Encyclopaedia

    4 skills

  • Play: Style (Class Reader)

    6 skills

  • Reading Fluency

    8 skills

  • Intensive Reading: Play (Class Reader)

    7 skills

  • Intensive Reading: Interpretation and Evaluation

    4 skills

  • Reading for Interpretation

    3 skills

  • Poetry: Characters

    3 skills

  • Extensive Reading (Grade Appropriate Fiction)

    3 skills

  • Note Making

    3 skills

  • Play: Project

    3 skills

  • Extensive Reading: Fiction

    4 skills

  • Grade-appropriate Play: Lessons learnt

    3 skills

  • Intensive Reading: Comprehension Strategies

    4 skills

  • Play: Characterisation

    3 skills

  • Intensive Reading: Visualising and Summarising

    3 skills

  • Grade-appropriate Play: Style

    3 skills

  • Summarising: Argumentative Texts

    4 skills

  • Intensive Reading: Play: Relating to Real Life

    4 skills

  • Intensive Reading: Poems

    3 skills
3Grammar in UseFifteen topics on the machinery of the language, taught in use rather than as rules to recite.15 topics·90 questions

  • Gender Neutral Language

    3 skills

  • Nouns and Quantifiers

    3 skills

  • Modal Auxiliaries

    3 skills

  • Present and Past Perfect Aspect

    3 skills

  • Order of Adjectives

    3 skills

  • Comparison of Adverbs

    3 skills

  • Relative Pronouns: Interrogative Pronouns

    3 skills

  • Complex Prepositions

    3 skills

  • Conjunctions: Correlative Conjunctions

    3 skills

  • Determiners: Numerals and Ordinals

    3 skills

  • Word Classes: Nouns

    3 skills

  • Phrasal Verbs

    3 skills

  • Sentences: Complex Sentences

    3 skills

  • Sentences: Direct and Indirect Speech

    4 skills

  • Sentences: Imperative (Commands, Requests) and Exclamatory

    3 skills
4WritingFifteen topics covering everything from legible handwriting to a job application and a 320 word composition.15 topics·75 questions

  • Legibility and Neatness

    4 skills

  • Mechanics of Writing: Punctuation

    3 skills

  • Structure of a Paragraph

    3 skills

  • Narrative and Descriptive Paragraphs

    4 skills

  • Letter of Application

    3 skills

  • Mechanics of Writing: Spelling

    3 skills

  • The Writing Process

    3 skills

  • Assessing Writing

    4 skills

  • Narrative Compositions

    3 skills

  • Filling Forms: Application Forms

    3 skills

  • Mechanics of Writing: Abbreviations and Acronyms

    3 skills

  • The Writing Process: Dialog

    3 skills

  • Creative Writing: Idioms

    3 skills

  • Descriptive Writing (280-320 words)

    5 skills

  • Emails

    3 skills

Why you can take this page at face value

Straight from the KICD design

The strands and topics on this page are the Grade 9 English Language curriculum as the Kenya Institute of Curriculum Development sets it out. We have not chosen them, reordered them or left any out.

Nothing here is a sample

Every topic below is covered in our question bank, not a selection of the easy ones. The numbers beside each strand are the real counts.

Marked by a machine, written by a person

Each question carries its full working and a note on why every wrong answer is wrong, so a child who misses one is told what they were thinking, not just that they were wrong.

See what your child can already do

Twenty questions, free, across any of these topics, with the complete weekly report that tells you which are solid and which are slipping. No card, nothing renews by itself.

Start free — 20 questions 🚀

400 Grade 9 English Language questions in the bank, covering every topic on this page.