General Awareness is a key element for IBPS PO. It is excluded from the prelims but has a significant weightage in mains exam as well as the interview. This article discusses the 6 most important points to note when preparing for General Awareness for IBPS PO.
No all-in-one-book: Things would have been much easier with one book to prepare from. But unfortunately, inspite of the inordinate promises from textbook publishers, there is NO one book with all the general knowledge portion. Preparation for GK questions in IBPS involves reading through lots of books and magazines. Remember that reading through multiple books requires patience as well as judgment. You need to be patient when you don’t find the required information in the given books. You have to exercise judgement to ensure you read only the important topics. Cracku is offering FREE daily tests for IBPS PO which contain several General Awareness questions. Bookmark the link today!
Read newspapers: Reading newspapers everyday is very essential to succeed in General Awareness for IBPS PO. News papers are the best source for current affairs, which is an important component of GK in exams. News channels also provide lots of General Awareness information within a short span of time. They are also current and presented in an easily absorb-able format.
Practice from Old test papers: GK is like an ocean. We need to prepare strategically and ensure that we spend our time in a way that’s useful for the exam. Practicing from old test papers increases our sense of what is important for the exam. Also, you can get a lot of information on banking awareness by going through previous papers. Banking Awareness is an important part of General Awareness subject for IBPS PO exam. So, it is a good idea to practice from as many previous papers as you can before you start preparing for General Awareness. Make good notes of all important topics that you come across. It helps a great deal when you start revision of the topics. Cracku is providing 25 FREE previous years’ banking papers with detailed solutions, which have lots of general awareness questions.
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Subscribe to an online study room: Staying on top of current affairs isn’t everything. Online study rooms are important for General Awareness as they are a very good source of static general knowledge. ie. facts that don’t change over a period of time.
For example: “When was Taj Mahal built?” is a static question as the answer can’t change with time. “Who is the Prime Minister of India?” is a dynamic question. The answer changes every 5 years.
A good study room provides information on all static gk topics of importance like:
- People and awards
- Acronyms
- Science and Technology
- History
- Geography
- Space Missions, etc
Use elimination: When practicing from mocks as well as in the actual exam, try to use the process of elimination thereby improving the chances of getting the answer right. This has to be executed meticulously. We have to eliminate the obviously wrong options and guesstimate the answer from the remaining options. For example study the options of the following questions carefully:
Who was the Chinese Emperor who died of mercury poisoning?
The options are: a) Ying Huhai b) Qin Shi Huang c) Fa Hian d) Huen Tsang
Now we all know that Fa Hian and Huen Tsang are travelers who visited India and not kings. So, if we eliminate those two we will be left with 2 options and the chance of getting it right is 50-50.
Participate in debates: Discuss about various events of national and international interest with your friends who are preparing for competitive exams. Debates are a very interesting form of learning. Prepare well before the debate. People go on for hours in debates thereby grasping loads of information without getting exhausted. Compared to silently reading a newspaper or sitting in a classroom listening to a monotonous lecture, debates are very absorbing.
Debates are the best for dynamic GK topics like:
- Current Affairs
- Public Policy
- CEOs of companies
- Politicians and their portfolios, etc
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