Friends, my previous post was on “Selection of Practice questions and the importance of Test series.”
You can go thru it here.. https://ieshelpline.wordpress.com/2015/04/12/shikhar-mehta-ece-prepration-strtgy-air-25-ese-2014
Cont…
General Studies
Analyzing the the last few years’ ESE pattern I would say prepare only Life sciences, Geography, polity, and current affairs.
For that Made easy notes are best, though not complete. I had also purchased Made easy’s Current Affairs Annual Edition. Also I practiced some Quizzes on GKtoday.in . Polity quizzes are really good on that website. If you still want some more relevant reading material then NCERTs can also be referred for Life Sciences and Geography.
Also you can practice questions from:
- Previous year IES
- NDA/CDS previous year
GS Questions keep coming from Year books, magazines, etc. But you have 800 marks Technical paper to look after too! So you choose the most relevant sources.
Now you have a quite obvious question.” Is all this really worth?”
Yes it is, after covering this you will see that you are not only able to attempt more in GS paper but your ‘Calculated Guesses’ will be closer to correct.
English
English part is the best to gain marks. There is a strategies for attempting questions like Sentence arrangement, comprehension passage and even the vocab part.
Comprehension passages:
Actually If you see comprehension passages they roughly fall under two categories
- First kind: The text is very simple and like a class 7 English short story.
You should: Read the complete paragraph by just strolling over each line and then go for the questions directly.
You will be able to almost all without even the second reading.
- Second of its kind: The passage will be a complex (usually from a different domain topic) like history, law, medicine etc. {Complex for an Engineering student}. So You should: Read the complete passage if you have time (which you will be having, usually in a GS paper) and if you are getting the context out of it. This will take time since the passage is an alien topic or it is complex/large.
Else, if you don’t have time, read the questions first and then go thru the passage this time you will get your answer while reading the passage. Yes this method requires practice. Follow this only if have practiced this way during the TS/self-study.
You can even search the Google to read some good blogs/forums. They share very good strategies to attempt passages and sentence arrangement.
In fact the Internet provides you so much knowledge and experience, Technical as well as nontechnical.
Just Google the topic and you will get a relevant ppt or pdf. Internet consumes time for searching and reading thru. Hence again, I would say Best is to discuss with someone.
For the sentence arrangement also, use short cuts
Leave vocab part since it takes a lot memorizing and most of the questions from last 3 years are very easy. Though for objective the “Root method” is quite meaningful.
Current affairs and geography if related can be very helpful in your preparation. Look closely at the current affairs questions from previous years you will see that Half of them are directly related, and so is their preparation. I will show you a sample of my prep.The Map method actually helped me remember much better. Similarly Current Affairs which you read from magazines/newspapers can be congregated onto a large blank Map in your room.
Friends, I know a lot still remains to be shared. You can ask them in the Comments so that we can make a separate post of FAQs.
Shikhar Mehta
AIR-25 ESE-14
PS: Next I will share how I maintained Focus, Clarity, enthusiasm and managed my time during the preparation.