Prepare for English Test in Bank & SSC Exams – Topics to Cover & Books

Nowadays all competition exams including IBPS Bank Exam & SBI PO/ Clerk exams have one subject in common – Test of English Language.Whether we like it or not, English has gained a strong presence in India with everyone speaking a bit of it.So banking & govt. organizations are also looking for candidates to posses a basic level of english to communicate with their customers.

We are getting many emails from bank exam aspirants asking us on how to prepare for English test.Here is our answer to them: It is not a language that can be learnt in a day or two & have to be practiced over a certain period of time,

But from the exams point of view, we have listed the important topics in english to concentrate while preparing for the banking exams.

This should help those candidates who feel they are weak in this section & need some  starting point to begin their preparations.

Know this First:

Be it SBI PO or IBPS PO or SSC CGL exam, the purpose of having this section is to check your knowledge in english language.

• Questions shall be of graduation level only
• Nearly 40% people who took bank exams last year failed in english test.
• The answer options could be confusing with 3 of the 4 choices looking similar.
• This is a scoring area as there are no numeric problems.Know the rules & you can clear.

As mentioned in exam notifications, this section carries 40 or 50 marks & they are considered for final scores.So if you do not perform well in english paper, the chances of your selection also goes down.

Topics to Cover:

The below list is not definitive but concentrating on these chapters will help you to attend atleast 90% of the paper.

• Reading Comprehension (answer based on the given passage)
  • Questions would not be direct & hence have to understand the passage to answer.
• Usage of words
  • Fill in the blanks with a correct word from the choices
• Synonyms & Antonyms
  • A phrase may be given asking you to choose a single word similar or opposite in meaning.
• Tenses (past, present, future & their variations)
  • example: gave,give,giving,had given,have been giving
• Sentence formation
  • complete the sentence by selecting the best words from options
• Error spotting (finding grammatical errors in a sentence)
• Ordering (random sentences to be arranged in a sequential manner)
• Preposition (above,down,under,between,till etc.,) & Conjunctions (and, but,or,yet,although,since etc.)
• Cloze Test Choose the correct meaningful word according to the passage & complete the sentence.

The above were compiled by referring previous bank & govt exams conducted by various different organizations.

Books:

It is always advisable to begin your preparations with some popular reference materials.Here are some to english books especially for bank & SSC exams.   * English language guide (with objective questions) – Rs.250 – Buy online

Even though we have provided the topics to cover for English test, you need to put in some efforts & practice regularly.