HPPSC Assistant Professor English SAT Syllabus and Pattern

Compiled from the official syllabus · check it against the official link

One descriptive paper: 3 hours, 120 marks, two equal parts ↑

This page is built from a single official document — the Himachal Pradesh Public Service Commission's revised syllabus for the Descriptive Subject Aptitude Test, issued for recruitment to the post of Assistant Professor (College Cadre) in English, Department of Higher Education, issued under No. 3-26/2026-PSC(R-I) and dated 24.07.2026. Every figure and every topic below is read off that PDF and written out here in our own words. The document itself is linked in the next section.

The header of that document states the pattern in one sentence: the paper is of three hours' duration, carries 120 marks, and consists of two parts, Part-I and Part-II. The line printed under the header repeats the same figures — Duration: 3 Hours, Subject: English, Max. Marks 120 — and the two part headings inside the paper carry 60 marks each.

The word doing the most work in that title is descriptive. This is a written paper on named texts and named critical essays, not an objective screening test. The document does not state how many questions there are, how long an answer should be, or whether choice is offered — so we do not state it either.

HPPSC does not publish one syllabus for all subjects — this is the English one ↑

One thing has to be said plainly before any topic list, because getting it wrong would cost a candidate months. The Commission does not issue a single combined Assistant Professor syllabus. It issues a separate document for each subject of the College Cadre, and the syllabus for Hindi, Commerce, Botany, Chemistry, Physics, Mathematics, History, Political Science, Sanskrit, Economics and the other subjects is a different PDF with different units.

The document behind this page covers English, and nothing else. Everything below applies to a candidate sitting the English paper. Do not carry these units — or even the 60 and 60 split — across to another subject. That split is stated in the English document; only the document for your own subject can state it for yours.

If your subject is not English, go to the Commission's own website, hppsc.hp.gov.in, open the syllabus listing and read the header line of your subject's PDF the way we have read this one. We have not seen those PDFs, so we will not summarise them here, and any page that summarises all of them from one source is guessing.

• The one official document behind this page — HPPSC revised SAT syllabus, Assistant Professor (College Cadre) in English, No. 3-26/2026-PSC(R-I) dated 24.07.2026: https://hppsc.hp.gov.in/CommonControls/CMSFileView?qs=oeMK915q2HkdpWSZ%2B0aaIFmLDoF0cTjGvKykbXugJ5Hsur8Ugd6bkb%2F6Rcx8wI1FUvNVy%2FcqGWmQ683hC2pHeDkM%2BaTAPQaV0TtIh0HZmFE%3D
• The Commission's own website, where the syllabus for every other College Cadre subject is listed: hppsc.hp.gov.in

Part-I at a glance — six units for 60 marks ↑

Part-I is the literature-history half. It runs from Unit I to Unit VI and carries 60 marks, and its centre of gravity is the set text: after the opening survey unit, every entry names a poem, a play or a novel.

The table below is our map of that half. The unit numbers and the area names are the document's; the count in the last column is ours, arrived at by counting the entries printed under each unit.

Part-II at a glance — six units for 60 marks ↑

Part-II is the harder half, and it is where most preparation runs out of time. It runs from Unit VII to Unit XII, carries the other 60 marks, and adds three things Part-I never asks for: the structure of the English language, literary theory, and Indian writing in English and in translation.

Note the imbalance between the two halves. Part-II carries more than twice as many entries as Part-I for exactly the same 60 marks — which is an argument for starting Part-II first, not last.

At a glance

Unit I — History of English Literature, all 2 entries ↑

Part-I opens with the only unit that is not about a set text. Two entries, both period surveys, and between them they cover the whole history of English literature.

Because nothing here is a named book, this is the unit most candidates postpone and then cannot revise. Build a single timeline sheet early and keep adding to it as you read the set texts of Units II to VI — every author you meet there belongs somewhere on it.

Unit II — Poetry from Chaucer to Pope, all 4 entries ↑

From here on the syllabus names texts, and naming is a promise: if a poem is printed, it can be asked about directly.

Four poets, but the workload is uneven — Donne alone carries six poems while Chaucer and Pope carry two each. Plan by poem count, not by poet count.

Unit III — Shakespeare and his Contemporaries, all 4 entries ↑

Four entries, four plays. Shakespeare appears twice — The Tempest and The Twelfth Night are listed as separate entries, so both are required.

Marlowe and Ben Jonson are here as contemporaries in their own right. Answers that treat them only as background to Shakespeare miss what the unit title says.

Unit IV — Nineteenth Century Fiction, all 4 entries ↑

Four novels, one per author, and no chapter limits anywhere. That means whole texts.

These are long books. Four novels cannot be started in the last month, which is the single most common planning mistake on this paper.

Unit V — Romantic and Victorian Poetry, all 6 entries ↑

The largest unit of Part-I: six poets, and the biggest bundle of named texts anywhere in the first sixty marks.

Every count on this page is ours, not the Commission's. The document names its texts and stops there; it never totals anything, so where we give a number we say so.

Unit VI — Modern Fiction, all 5 entries ↑

Five novelists close Part-I. With Unit IV that makes nine novels in the first sixty marks alone.

One trap worth naming now: Forster's A Passage to India is a novel here, and Whitman's poem of the same name appears in Unit VIII. They are different entries in different parts of the paper.

Unit VII — Growth and Structure of English Language, all 10 entries ↑

Part-II opens with the widest unit in the syllabus. Ten entries, and they come from three different worlds — language theory, the structure of English, and classical literary criticism.

Two entries fix a chapter range instead of a whole book, which is a gift: Baugh is limited to Chapters 3 to 9 and Coleridge's Biographia Literaria to Chapters 13-18. Read exactly that.

Unit VIII — Modern British and American Poetry, all 6 entries ↑

Six poets, but the entry lengths are wildly unequal: T.S. Eliot carries one poem, William Carlos Williams carries eleven items.

Two entries narrow the reading for you. Whitman's Song of Myself is limited to sections 1, 5 and 33, and Auden's September 1, 1939 is a single dated poem, not a period.

Unit IX — Introduction to Drama, Modern British Drama and American Drama, all 9 entries ↑

The drama unit, and the only one that mixes theory with texts: one entry on the elements and forms of drama, then eight plays.

The eight split evenly — four Modern British and four American — and the syllabus prints those two as separate sub-headings. Prepare them as two traditions that answer each other.

Unit X — World Fiction, Research Methods and the Future of English, all 7 entries ↑

Five novels grouped by the syllabus under World Fiction, and then two topics that are not literature at all — research methods, and the future of English.

Those last two are the easiest entries to skip and the easiest to be caught by, because no set text protects you. They are open questions and must be prepared as arguments of your own.

Unit XI — Contemporary Literary Theory, all 8 entries ↑

Eight theory entries, and the hardest reading on the paper. Three of them are printed with a bracket naming the anthology the essay should be read from.

Read them in the order the syllabus prints, not in the order they look easy. Saussure has to come before Derrida for Derrida to mean anything at all.

Unit XII — Indian Writing in English and Indian Writing in Translation, all 12 entries ↑

The last unit, and the only one split into two named halves: six entries of Indian Writing in English, then six of Indian Writing in Translation.

The translation half names the translator for three of its six entries and the publisher for two. Where an edition is named, use that edition — a different translation is a different text in an examination answer.

Every number on this page, and where it comes from ↑

A syllabus page is only as good as its arithmetic is honest, so here is the whole of ours. The Commission's document states four figures and nothing else: 3 hours, 120 marks, 60 marks for Part-I and 60 marks for Part-II. It never totals anything, never counts its own units, and never counts its own topics.

So every count on this page is ours, worked out by counting what is printed. We label them here rather than letting them pass as official figures: 12 units (Unit I to Unit XII as printed), 6 units in each part, 77 topic entries in all, 25 of them in Part-I and 52 in Part-II, 9 novels across Units IV and VI, 11 items under William Carlos Williams, and 8 plays in Unit IX. The 60 plus 60 that makes 120 is the document's own arithmetic, and it agrees.

Five printing quirks in the PDF are worth naming, because a reader comparing this page with the original will notice them and should know we did too. In Unit V the document prints "MyLast Duchess" with the space missing; in Unit VIII it prints "AfterApple Picking" and in Unit XI "Margins of ModernNation" the same way. In Unit XII a line break runs two names together as "The Striders Keki, N. Daruwala" — The Striders belongs to A.K. Ramanujan's entry and Keki N. Daruwala begins the next one, which is how we have set them out. And Premchand's Intent of Literature is printed with a closing quotation mark that has no opening partner.

One thing in Unit XI we will not resolve for you. The bracket printed after Elaine Showalter reads, in the document's own words, "For Essays: 1-5", followed by the details of the Lodge anthology. It is not stated whether that means the first five essays listed in Unit XI or essays numbered 1 to 5 inside the anthology. Both readings are possible from the page; the document settles neither, and neither will we. The practical course is to read the theory essays of Unit XI from the named Lodge reader wherever they appear in it.

What this document does not state — and we will not invent ↑

A syllabus annexure defines scope. It does not answer every question a candidate has, and the honest thing is to name the gaps instead of filling them with a confident guess. For each of the following, the Commission's own notification and its website are the only sources worth trusting.

This matters more than usual on this page, because the missing items include the two that candidates most often assume. There is no negative marking rule here, and there is no screening-test syllabus here.

• Negative marking. The document does not mention it at all. Anyone quoting a deduction for this paper is quoting something else.
• The number of questions, their type, their length, and whether internal choice is given. None of it is stated.
• How the 60 marks of a part are divided among its units. No unit is given a weight; the marks are stated only at part level.
• Any screening test or preliminary paper for this post. This document is the descriptive SAT syllabus only, and it says nothing about a stage before it.
• The medium of answering — whether an answer may be written in Hindi. Not stated in this document.
• Exam date, application dates, fee, vacancies, age limit, qualification and reservation. A syllabus document carries none of these; the advertisement does.
• Interview or viva marks, and how the SAT score is combined with anything else in the final selection.
• Cut-off or qualifying marks of any kind.
• The syllabus for any subject other than English. Each College Cadre subject has its own PDF on hppsc.hp.gov.in.
• A book list. The Commission prescribes texts inside units and, in a few places, a named edition — but a topic list is not a reading list, and nothing here ranks or recommends guides.

Important Links