Answer writing for ias civil service mains exams

There is no fixed way of answer writing. Aspirants continuously innovate to make the answer informative and attractive. The article is to introduce you to the ways of answer writing.

New upsc pattern

The new question pattern of upsc is aimed at giving away to rote learning and introducing creative ways of answer writing. One of the changes is the variation is the words in answers. There are 50 words, 20 words, 100 words etc needed for questions. This calls for adjusting your knowledge according to the number of words needed.

The content in your mind while writing the exam is fixed. You need to stretch it, condense it according to need. Some aspirants would have studied loads of material enough for an essay for say: spot fixing, and if upsc asks it for 2 marks!. They they find themselves in a tricky spot.

The skill to expand, contract answers is needed. There are people who are staunch opponents of coaching of any kind for ias exams. In fact, good coaching centres teach these skills. These are skills that the high school teacher forgot to say; unfortunately we got to learn it after graduation!

Word length

There may be topics for which you need only 100 words, but you know more than 600 words. Its well and good that you know the answer, but the teacher can’t put you 20 marks for a 6 mark question. There are aspirants who go on writing answers all they know, forgetting that he has crossed the word limit. In the enthusiasm to “write the best answer”, he ends up with a boring long answer.

Aspirants thought “wow, i wrote all i know”

Examiner’s thought “the kid made a test series when asked about IPL”

In short, when asked to play a crisp short film, don’t play “once upon a time in America” or “the god father”; the MI or F&F would be better option.