How to prepare for Bank/IBPS/SBI/RBI/Insurance Exams 2019-20 at home

🔘How to prepare for Bank/IBPS/SBI/RBI/Insurance Exams 2019-20 at home :

Cracking any banking exam is a game of time management and your mastery in skipping questions.

You must know what "To Skip" during the exam. While preparing for any banking/Insurance examinations, you need to keep a balance between accuracy and speed.
Attempting maximum questions mustn’t be priority, you should be sure that whatever you attempt, you get it right. So, accuracy plays very important role in any banking exam. Hard work coupled with smart work is the best if we want a lead in such exams.

For speed and timing we should focus on subjects which requires less time and gives maximum gain. Here comes General Awareness and English.

In Maths and reasoning we have to focus on accuracy rather than only on attempts. The pattern is almost same for every bank exam either be it SBI Exam or IBPS Exam.

 Now let's go through each section one by one.

REASONING-

Reasoning section is getting complex day by day. It includes so many topics each of which requires different approach and concept. You have to practice topic wise to command every topic included in the syllabus.

There are few topics which are like nightmare to most of the aspirants. The first and foremost is Puzzle/Sitting Arrangements. Earlier, students used to skip puzzles and still score well in the remaining questions other than lengthy puzzles. But now the scenario has been totally changed.

Puzzles and Sitting Arrangements are covering significant portion of reasoning questions. One cannot think of selection by avoiding complex puzzles. Nowadays Puzzles that are being asked in exams are time taking, calculative and complex. Practice is the only key mantra to ace this section. Also while practicing it is very important that you keep an eye on your timing. For this you need to practice 4-5 puzzles of same type with your timer on and then take out average of your timings to calculate approx time you are taking in each type of puzzles. This will help you during your exam to eliminate puzzles which are time taking for you, if you are left with less time. Also, you can analyse how much you are improving and you can surely gain confidence by seeing time taken by you before and after practicing.

Other topics after concept clarity also requires time bound practice. The more you practice, the better you get. For practice you can refer to some good online resources and do attempt daily quiz to be regular on your practice. Recommending online resources because they keep on changing according to the latest pattern in recent exams thus reducing our time and effort. So for reasoning online preparation is preferred.

ENGLISH-

Languages can't be learnt or enriched overnight. You have to make a conscious and determined effort to improve. It is not as tough as it's considered. Any person without any coaching can get decent marks in this section by following a right strategy.

 To score good in English one must have good reading skills. Try to learn English as a language and not as a subject.

English basically comprises of three major parts as follows:-

1. Vocabulary

2. Grammar

3. Reading Comprehension

Now let’s discuss one by one.

1. Vocabulary-

Now this is the trickiest part of the paper. No matter how many words you memorize you can never be sure of this section. So what should be done? 

Many people will advise you to read English newspaper daily and mark important words in it, then jot them down on a separate notebook with their meanings and then revise them. Although this is a very good habit and it will improve your English as a whole no doubt. But this process is very time taking and there are too many who find it difficult to do. You will end up taking too much of pain yet low scores in exam. This is good for your overall English understanding. Now when you specifically want to apply your knowledge in some competitive exam, you need to figure out the pattern of the exam. You need relevant material, effective and time bound strategy to get your job done within limited time duration.

See there are n no. of words which you actually can’t follow or remember so you have to act smart and focus on all the important words previously asked in the examination. Here comes the tedious task of looking for the most relevant resource from examination point of view from a lot of irrelevant stuff available online. Also it is very difficult to find any one single resource online where we can get anything and everything according to our need. We have to switch from one resource to another in a hope to get the best, relevant and updated content which kills our precious time and we end up getting a lot of irrelevant, confusing and boring material which anyhow doesn’t serve our purpose.

There is this one place EnglishKendra.com which is found to be the most relevant and updated form of online resource available in the market today. This is updated with the latest pattern content. Aspirants found the content to be very unique and interesting.

Here in this website we have provided a very concise and most relevant content comprising previous year vocab, The Hindu Vocab, The Hindu Phrasal verbs, The Hindu idioms etc.

Now after getting the most relevant content according to aspirants' need, our major concern is about how to memorise and retain the list of words, their meanings and synonym antonym in our mind. Examples always make things interesting, easy to understand and connecting  that helps us to memorize them effortlessly in no time.  So the best and the only way is to connect the “vocab” into the sentences which will give us a good learning and understanding. Speak English as much as possible using the new words learnt and understand the context where they can be effectively used. Check here-

2. Grammar-

This is the section where aspirants waste their precious time.

First of all a basic understanding of grammar rules is much required before jumping directly to any result likewise most of readers used to predict the sentences considering same like they used to think and this “Habit” deviates them to know the clear cut facts and to know the actual content.

Most of the aspirants used to leave these questions unanswered because they have this thing in mind that grammar is very vast, confusing and they cannot cover whole portion. It is true that whole grammar consists of thousands of rules and cramming all of these rules is a difficult task. But most of us are unaware of the fact that those grammar rules which are relevant for our exam point of view are fixed and limited. We only have to learn and understand those fixed rules and practice them consistently.

The website www.englishkendra.com provides a list of those Golden rules of grammar which are most important from examination point of view. Also they have provided a list of most commonly asked rules along with examples from different previous year papers conforming that the same had been asked in various previous year papers. 

So we would suggest you to go through these lists, learn and then practice from the quiz provided there with detailed explanation that will help you make your concept clear and strong. Revise these rules as much as you can to retain them for a longer period of time.

Also you can keep yourself consistent with your practice by attending various live quizes conducted on daily basis in the below Telegram Group to help you master the rules and keep you exam ready. Also you can post your queries and discuss with experts regarding your doubts anytime in the Discussion Group and make you free from the fear of Grammar.

3. Comprehension/Cloze tests/jumbled sentences

To ace this section do at least one hour editorial reading( Business/economy related articles)of The Hindu, Indian Express, Economic Times etc. There is no need to buy any newspaper. Just follow this telegram channel to get daily the Hindu editorials and Vocabulary

EnglishKendra Channel- https://t.me/EnglishKendra_group

You will get The Hindu article and The Hindu vocab all at one place on daily basis without roaming here and there to get relevant content. And I do not recommend jotting down current affairs and vocabs by wasting your precious time. 

For practicing relevant exam oriented Reading Comprehension , Cloze tests, para jumbles, you can refer to  Englishkendra.com website where we have provided a great number of Reading Comprehension, cloze tests, para jumbles for practice(which are prepared from the recent articles of newspapers like The Hindu,The Indian Express, magazines and books) . You can practice two RC’s daily, one without time limit and one within time limit and then analyse your performance. In this manner you can master RC’s and can be a pro at it.

Cloze Test is also an important topic of your exam which you cannot ignore. Generally candidates are very afraid of this topic but it has nothing to fear about. If your vocabulary, grammar and comprehension skills are good, you can easily perform good in this topic. Language is the thing which makes any RC or cloze test easy, moderate or tough. Every aspirant has different level of understanding the language. So it’s very important that you should analyse your level of understanding and practice accordingly to improve yourself. After understanding the demands of aspirants this website has divided the Cloze tests in different categories of easy, moderate and difficult. You have to practice Cloze tests from the website. We have provided detailed solution containing unique solving techniques which provides you a better approach of solving Cloze tests.

Importance of Mocks-

The basic idea is to get familiar with the exam and be able to solve maximum questions ( with accuracy) in least time. Appear for mock tests and see how do you perform in a time bound scenario and where do you lack. Have a comparative analysis with the performances of other aspirants too. Mock tests will let you know your mistakes, learn that particular topic and repeat the same procedure. Note down any new pattern question, rule or vocab during analysis of mock. Appear for another mock test, analyze and rectify.

From a month before exam you should make a habit of giving mocks daily at the same time at which you have your original exam on the day.

Practice is the only thing that eventually makes you perfect in whatever you do. So whatever method you follow to learn, make sure you do it on a regular basis for an adequate period of time.

For practicing categories wise topics and for much more exam oriented and unique content you can refer to this website.

For daily quiz, discussion, queries of aspirants and their solutions you can visit to this telegram group-https://t.me/SSCGROUPBANKGROUP

QUANTITAVE APTITUDE-

You should list all the Quantitative Aptitude topics and segregate them as per your strong and weak areas. Focus more on your weak areas while practicing your strong sections simultaneously.

Stick to a good aptitude book like RS Agrawal/Kiran. Also, you can refer to M Tyra or Arun Sharma for shortcuts after your conceptual clearance. Clear your basics. Solve as many question as you can and revise it again and again. Gradually you will see the progress.

After learning basics and practicing relevant questions, you can start learning some shortcuts to improve your speed.

For competitive exams, speed plays a vital role. By hearting tables, squares, cubes is a must. Learn shortcuts of square root, cube root, study shortcuts to find HCF, LCM. You must know divisibility rules n factorisation techniques that will help you to reduce ratios in lowest form. Also, memorize percentage conversion. All these efforts will help you to develop numerical common sense.

 Keep appearing for mocks consistently to check your performance. It's better to not give mocks if you are not analysing your mocks. Analysing mock is as important as giving mock.

Take mocks, analyse your mistakes, learn from mistakes. It will improve your speed.

GENERAL AWARENESS-

This section can give maximum gain in least time that's why it becomes most important section in any exam. If you focus this section with right approach then for sure this will be of immense help in increasing your overall score.

There are majorly two parts of this section:

1. Static

2. Dynamic

For Static portion, you can refer to various online resources providing static topic pdf's like currencies, capitals, national parks, Dance forms etc. or any good book covering static topic like Lucent general Awareness.

Learn them by heart and revise them by attempting daily quizes and MCQ's.

Dynamic portion includes Current affairs basically. For current affairs, you can refer to current affairs compilations or capsules of past 6-8 months prior to exam provided by any of the good online websites.

Also you can buy offline current affairs magzines to cover this portion like Banking Services Chronicle.

Good Luck..!!