1. Which sentence contains a COMMA SPLICE?
ICAS English Paper F (Year 8)
Paper F is sat by Year 8 students and is the hardest English paper in the range. Fifty questions in 55 minutes, mostly multiple choice.
Last updated: 5 October 2026
What makes it hard
Not vocabulary, and not comprehension in the ordinary sense. By Year 8 most students can read the passages.
What separates results is how much of the answer depends on a single word. Paper F questions routinely turn on one adverb, one choice of verb, one piece of punctuation — and the four options are all defensible readings of the passage as a whole. The right answer is the one supported by that specific detail.
The second thing is evaluation. Earlier papers ask what a text does. Paper F asks whether it does it well, or which of two texts does it better, or what a writer has chosen to leave out. Those questions have no equivalent in most Year 8 classrooms.
Where marks go
- Single-detail questions, per above. Answering from the general sense of the passage is an easy way to lose them.
- What is not said. Omission questions are a Paper F speciality
- Comparative judgement between two texts, rather than comparison of them
- Pace. Fifty dense questions in 55 minutes leaves little spare
What the mark will look like
ICAS marks run lower than school tests by design. The paper keeps stretching students well past year level, so a result that looks disappointing on a school scale can be a strong ICAS result — read it against the distribution rather than as a percentage.
How to prepare for Paper F
The highest-value habit is narrow: when reviewing a wrong answer, find the exact words in the passage that rule out the option your child chose. Not "why is C right" but "which three words make B wrong". That is the standard the paper is written to.
Beyond that, full papers under time. At this level the last passage is where results are decided.
Common questions
Which year level sits ICAS Paper F?
Year 8. ICAS names its papers by letter rather than by year — Paper A is Year 3 and Paper F is Year 8 — so a Year 8 student sits Paper F.
How long is English Paper F?
50 questions in 55 minutes.
How should we review a wrong answer on Paper F?
Find the exact words in the passage that rule out the option your child chose. Not “why is C right” but “which three words make B wrong”. That is the standard the paper is written to.
Year 8 also sits: Maths Paper F · Science Paper F
Sample questions
Try each one first, then open the answer and worked solution under it.
Answer and worked solution
Correct answer: D
A comma splice glues two COMPLETE sentences together with only a comma.
'The storm passed' and 'we finally swam' are both complete — a bare comma between them is the splice.
The other versions join the clauses legally: a semicolon, a conjunction ('so'), or a fronted dependent clause.
'The storm passed, we finally swam.' is the comma splice.
2. In a formal essay, which phrase best replaces 'a lot of evidence'?
Answer and worked solution
Correct answer: C
'Substantial' carries the same quantity with academic weight.
Heaps and tons are conversational measures; 'quite a bit' is vague hedging without precision.
'Substantial evidence' suits the register.
3. The school has several science teachers. Which sentence punctuates the possessive correctly?
Answer and worked solution
Correct answer: B
The sentence before tells you how many owners there are: several teachers, so the owner word is plural.
That plural already ends in s, so the apostrophe goes after the s rather than before it.
That gives teachers' marking guides.
The science teachers' marking guides were updated.
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Related papers: English Paper E (Year 7) · Maths Paper F (Year 8)
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