ICSE computer tuition in Bangalore, on two weekday evenings, live online.

The earlier Tuesday class is light on typing on purpose: a student who has just walked in from school can think and answer aloud without setting up a long program. The Wednesday class sits later, after dinner, because writing a 15-mark program properly takes calm, uninterrupted time. A Bengaluru student with sports practice or another tuition on one of these evenings is better off in one to one than missing half the batch every week.

Both slots are online, so a late finish at school does not mean a late start: there is no road between home and class. The structure of the course, unit by unit, is on the ICSE Computer Applications syllabus explained.

The question. Write a program to accept a sentence. Print it with the first letter of each word in capitals and the rest in small letters. Also print the longest word with its length, and the number of words whose first and last letters are the same, ignoring case. Words are separated by one or more spaces.

import java.util.Scanner;

class WordScan {
    public static void main(String[] args) {
        Scanner sc = new Scanner(System.in);
        System.out.print("Enter a sentence: ");
        String s = sc.nextLine().trim() + " ";
        String word = "", longest = "", title = "";
        int sameEnds = 0;
        for (int i = 0; i < s.length(); i++) {
            char ch = s.charAt(i);
            if (ch != ' ') {
                word = word + ch;
            } else if (word.length() > 0) {
                if (word.length() > longest.length())
                    longest = word;
                char first = Character.toLowerCase(word.charAt(0));
                char last = Character.toLowerCase(
                                word.charAt(word.length() - 1));
                if (first == last)
                    sameEnds++;
                title = title + Character.toUpperCase(word.charAt(0))
                        + word.substring(1).toLowerCase() + " ";
                word = "";
            }
        }
        System.out.println(title.trim());
        System.out.println("Longest word: " + longest
                           + " (" + longest.length() + " letters)");
        System.out.println("Words that start and end with the same letter: "
                           + sameEnds);
    }
}

Enter a sentence: every evening Anita reads aloud to her level headed sister
Every Evening Anita Reads Aloud To Her Level Headed Sister
Longest word: evening (7 letters)
Words that start and end with the same letter: 2

Enter a sentence: nOON is here
Noon Is Here
Longest word: nOON (4 letters)
Words that start and end with the same letter: 1

Enter a sentence:    two  spaces   between
Two Spaces Between
Longest word: between (7 letters)
Words that start and end with the same letter: 1

Trace of the second run, one word at a time

The four ideas this program is really testing

• The sentinel space. Adding " " to the end means the last word is processed inside the loop. Forget it, and the last word is silently ignored: a classic lost mark.
• Strings do not change in place. word.substring(1).toLowerCase() returns a new String; it has to be joined into title or it is lost.
• Comparing chars, not Strings. first == last is correct because both are char. For two Strings, == would be wrong and equals would be needed.
• Strictly greater. > keeps the first of two equally long words. Using >= would change the answer when there is a tie, and the question should be read for which one it wants.

More programs of this kind, from palindrome words to letter frequency, each run in Java, are on ICSE Class 10 String programs.

CISCE weighs the internal assessment equally with the written paper, 100 marks each. It is awarded on a minimum of twenty laboratory assignments across the year, half the marks by the subject teacher and half by an external examiner. Ten of every fifty go to the variable description, and another ten to coding and documentation, so a program that runs but is not explained can still lose a fifth of its marks.

Two lines we do not cross. We never write an assignment for a student to submit, and we never change the school's question or format to suit our teaching. What we will do is take a school question the student finds hard, teach the idea behind it with a different example, and then watch the student solve the real one themselves. The complete internal assessment scheme is on the ICSE project and internal assessment page.