English Grammar is a vital part of the preparation for banking exams. Most students have doubts regarding the course, syllabus and the rules that they have to follow for this exam. We understand that English is the language of the 21st century. In order to become a well experienced working professional, you should have a strong hold of the English language. For a lot of people, this is a difficult task to achieve because English can’t be improved in 1 or 2 weeks. It takes a significant amount of time and practice to strengthen your knowledge about English Grammar and how you bring this improvement in your everyday life.
That being said, if you prepare for anything without a plan it takes a lot more effort and time to excel in that subject. In this article, we are going to tell you all about How to prepare English for IBPS Exam? We will also be explaining the fundamentals of grammar that you should focus on particularly for banking exams. A well-formed plan will also be included in this article to make sure you get straight to work without any hurdles.
Improving English for IBPS Exams
The current scenario of the different type of bank exams has increased the importance of the English language and the difficulty level of the questions quite significantly. This section has now become a powerful vertex where every individual has been challenged cross the boundaries of mediocre English and gain success. The biggest misconception of people appearing in competitive exams is that they read the rules of grammar and think it is sufficient for them to attempt all questions. The problem really happens when they think in their mother tongue and then translate the sentence back to English before using it. This problem causes them to make multiple mistakes and leads to faulty grammar.
The solution to this problem will be reading newspapers or books regularly to make your brain learn the rules of grammar subconsciously. Once you have read a whole bunch of uses of one word, you will get a sense to use it in your own sentences properly. To avoid being lost in translation, make sure you start thinking in English and converse in English regularly. Watching English News or TV shows can greatly improve your spoken English as well.
The first step to preparing for the IBPS Exam means that you should be well aware of the basic rules of grammar. This includes 8-10 important rules of all the major parts that people make mistakes in. The list includes –
- Nouns and Pronouns
- Number in Nouns
- Tenses
- Articles
- Prepositions
- Subject-Verb Agreement
- Conjunctions
- Parts of speech
- Adjectives
- Sentence Construction
These 10 things are the fundamentals of all grammar based questions in the IBPS Exams. The Clerk, PO, and RRB Exam consist of 40 questions of 1 mark each. The IBPS SO Exam consists of 50 questions of 0.5 mark each evaluating to 25 marks for the entire section. This can be the differentiating factor for many good and excellent candidates.
Plan for English Improvement
Start Consuming Regularly – An important part of learning any language is consuming it in huge amounts to give examples to the brain for sentence formation. If you start watching the news in English regularly, you will work on both the General Awareness section and the Verbal section simultaneously. In conjunction with the news, you can also watch English Entertainment shows to see how the language is used in real life. Reading newspapers and novels is also a great factor that will make you practice reading the question paper faster as well. Reading practice will make sure you read the questions fast at the time of the exam as well.
Learn New Words every day – Vocabulary and knowledge of word usage can greatly improve the quality of your sentences and impact the impact that you have on the reader. If you get a trusted dictionary like Wren and Martin and make it a point to read at least 30 new words each day at random, the vocabulary will be nourished with these words regularly. With these words, you can also learn the synonyms and antonyms. This will ensure that you don’t end up using the same word repeatedly and can be asked directly in questions as well.
Brush up Basics – Brush up the basic rules of grammar for all the topics listed above accurately. If read these rules every ten days and practice some related questions along side, you can also reduce the mistakes that you make. A lot of the questions in the verbal reasoning section are derived from the basics. Ensuring that you have a sound understanding of them will make the glass half full already.
Practice Passages – These types of questions are something everyone has been attempting since middle school but no one seems to properly know how to attempt them. The most efficient way to attempt passages is to read the questions first and then reading the passage. This way you will have a gist of the overall idea about the passage before even reading and the answers can be found quite easily as well. As you read, make sure to highlight the important points or make notes wherever you seem fit. In case of computer based exams, you can note down the important points on paper for faster reference. Practice this technique on two passages every day for best results.
Note down your mistakes – As you start attempting previous year questions or sample papers you will recognize your strengths and weaknesses. Keep a note of the mistakes that you make regularly and get back to that topic after attempting all the questions. This will provide the assurance that you have no weak points and the score will be improved drastically as well.
Attempt Computer Based Exams – Some people get so used to offline pen and paper based exams that their whole strategy falls off in front of the computer. This type of exams can take a little bit of time to get used to, but once you have enough experience it will be a cakewalk. Regular practice will teach you time management skills and also make sure you don’t get intimidated by the questions on the screen.
We hope this article has given you a great deal of information about the English section of the IBPS Exam and what you can do to improve it. You can adapt this plan to your everyday practice schedule for maximum benefits. Moreover, download the exam preparation app to get free quizzes and IBPS exam preparation.
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Please Note: This article is a contribution by Grade-up, India’s largest online learning community.
