Reading comprehension is an important topic for all bank PO exams. By analyzing the previous papers of banking exams like SBI PO, we can infer that the topic covers about 10-15% of the paper. Hence to do well in these exams, you must excel in reading comprehension questions. Â In this post, we will discuss some tips and tricks for reading comprehension for bank PO exams. Read tips for reading comprehension for IBPS PO.
READING COMPREHENSION FOR BANK PO
Reading comprehension constitutes nearly 33% of the verbal section in bank po. Hence doing well in this topic can also help in clearing the cutoff marks for SBI PO and other bank exams with ease.Reading comprehension can be the easiest topic to score marks if you do a little bit of practice. This is because you have the passage in front of you and you just need to find the correct answer from the passage. Moreover, the questions on reading comprehension for bank PO exams are fairly direct. So you need not understand the passage in depth. A decent understanding of the passage can help you answer all the questions.
Let’s have a look at few important tips and tricks which can help you in solving the reading comprehension questions for bank PO more accurately.
PASSAGE FIRST OR QUESTION FIRST?
This is a doubt which most aspirants face. Questions on reading comprehension for bank PO are straight forward. Hence the students get confused. Should one go through the passage first or should one go through the questions first? There is no definite answer to this. It depends on the method with which you are comfortable. However, having a cursory reading of the passage before moving on to the questions generally helps. You become familiar with the structure of the passage. So when you look at a question, you know which part of the passage to refer to. This will save time as you don’t have to go through the passage again and again.
On the other hand having a look at the questions first makes you aware of the answers you are looking for. Hence you know which part to read carefully. Thus, both methods have their advantages. You should choose the one which you are more comfortable with. Try and use both the methods and see which one gives you better accuracy and faster speed.
DEVELOP A GOOD VOCABULARY
Around 40 percent of the questions on reading comprehension for bank PO are directly vocabulary based. You are required to find the synonym/antonym of the highlighted word. Hence in order to do well in these questions, you must have a good vocabulary. The words which are tested in bank exams are fairly easy so going through the newspaper daily would be enough to handle the vocabulary questions.
NO NEED TO ATTEMPT ALL QUESTIONS
A general tendency is to attempt all the questions in the given passage. This need not be always followed. There are always one or two questions which are relatively difficult. Leave such questions if you are not sure about the answer. Random guessing can cause more harm than good. Thus choosing the right questions is also an important skill. You will develop this skill with practice. Hence take as many mocks as possible.
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PREVIOUS YEARS PAPERS
This is the most important part of your preparation. Please go through the questions on reading comprehension for bank PO from the previous year papers of IBPS PO. This would give you a better idea about the kind of logic which is tested in the exam. Hence, solving previous year’s papers is an important part of your preparation. You can also make use of free mocks for SBI PO and other banking exams to get a good grip on reading comprehension.
Now that we have discussed few important strategies of attempting the paper and increasing the accuracy, let’s discuss some important question types.
Most of the questions in banking exams are direct. However, sometimes some inference based questions are also asked. These questions require a thorough understanding of the passage. An important advice here would be that you should attempt these questions at the end. These questions are more time taking than direct questions. So, one should come to these questions only after solving the rest of the paper. We will discuss some of these question types.
CENTRAL IDEA/THEME OF THE PASSAGE
These questions require you to understand what the passage is all about. Read the full passage carefully. Understand the main point that the author is trying to convey through the passage. This main point is the central idea of the passage.
Hence one should read the passage very carefully in order to answer this question correctly.
PROFESSION OF THE AUTHOR
These questions require you to guess the most likely profession of the author. These questions are generally not asked in reading comprehension for bank PO exams. However, recently the number of inference based questions has been on the rise. So you can expect this kind of questions. In these questions, you need to understand the language of the passage. A subject expert is more likely to be the author of the passage which contains technical language. A passage in normal language is more likely to be written by a journalist, blogger, etc. The only way to do well in these questions is practice. With practice, you can develop the ability to solve these questions with high accuracy.
TONE OF THE PASSAGE
This is another important question type for inference based questions. Reading comprehension question for bank PO exam generally do not have so close options. So, this type of questions are not very difficult. You need to be familiar with various tones of the passage. So please go through the common tones of passages. Once you understand these, you will be able to solve such questions with ease.
Thus, we have discussed the common inference based questions. These have started appearing in bank exams. So, you should prepare well for these questions by taking free daily tests on reading comprehension.
CONCLUSION
Thus, you can see that questions on reading comprehension for bank PO exams are not very difficult. In fact you can make them your strong point by a little bit of practice. You can find daily practice tests for different topics on our website.
We have other similar posts for some other topics as well. These can be very helpful in your preparation. So, please go through them.
