CUET English 2026 Topic-wise Weightage
80% of the paper is Verbal Ability and 20% is Reading Comprehension. RC tends to be much easier than Verbal Ability, so start with Verbal Ability first.
Share of English questions by section
Vocabulary is the most important, with around 10 questions per paper. Then you have around 9 Word Usage questions, 5 to 6 Grammar questions and 5 Parajumbles.
Verbal Ability topics: Questions per paper, lowest and highest
The fewest and the most questions a topic had in one paper, and its average, CUET 2026
CUET English Difficulty by Topic
Across all 29 papers, around 49% of the questions were Easy, 43% Medium and only around 8% Hard. So on average, only about 4 questions out of 50 were genuinely difficult.
Average number of questions by difficulty
Of the 50 questions in a paper, CUET 2026
60 minutes for 50 questions: About 72 seconds a question.
But the difficulty is not the same across topics. Vocabulary, Literary Devices and Idioms had the most Hard questions, while Word Usage and Grammar were mostly Easy.
Difficulty split by topic
Share of each topic's questions, CUET 2026
CUET English Vocabulary, Idioms and Phrasal Verbs
Vocabulary, Idioms and Phrasal Verbs throw up really random words, like all of these from the 2026 papers. So, start with them first.
- profligate
- lassitude
- burlesque
- sacrosanct
- calumny
- supernumerary
- the bee's knees
- cut corners
- cross the Rubicon
- cut both ends
- bear down
- pull through
- break through
- turn down
- oxymoron
- synecdoche
- apostrophe
- epigram
Flashcards for CUET English
Preparoo has 10,000+ Flashcards for CUET English, including every word from the CUET PYQs, and cards for Vocabulary, Idioms, Phrasal Verbs, Grammar, Literary Devices and Root Words. There is a tip to remember every card, and you can bookmark the words you did not know.
CUET English Reading Comprehension Question Types
Reading Comprehension was the easiest part of the paper. Around 64% of all RC questions were Easy, against 45% for Verbal Ability.
Difficulty split by section
Share of each section's questions, CUET 2026
Around half of all RC questions had the answer directly in the passage (Specific Detail), 20% were Inference and 18% tested Vocabulary in Context. So for RC, practise a lot and increase your reading speed.
Share of RC questions by question type
All 289 Reading Comprehension questions, CUET 2026
Recommended Study Order for CUET 2027 English
Based on weightage and difficulty.
Verbal Ability
- Vocabulary10.1 per paper
- Idioms3.0 per paper
- Word Usage9.2 per paper
- Grammar5.5 per paper
- Parajumbles5.0 per paper
- Phrasal Verbs3.1 per paper
- Spelling2.0 per paper
- Literary Devices2.4 per paper
Reading Comprehension
- Reading the Passage
- Understanding the Question
- Eliminating Wrong Options 10.0 per paper
Try a Full CUET English 2026 Paper
Preparoo has all 85 CUET English papers from 2022 to 2026 as full mocks and topic-wise tests for free, with simple solutions.
Detailed analytics after every attempt, so you know how to structure your prep.
