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.

Civil service IAS exam : Common mistakes aspirants make in UPSC exams

The civil service exam is one of the most prestigious exam in India. Graduates from all subjects ranging from pali literature to philosophy to engineering degree take this exam. There is no other exam where you can see IIT’ian ,B.Arts and doctors taking the same exam. The aim of all being same – to become an ias officer. Here many aspirants make some mistakes which form the subject of this article. I have covered other areas too which can be seen in by checking out my articles.

Gross mismanagement of time is a major mistake students make. There are many students who don’t have time left for anything after they have completed paper reading. This is mainly because of the lack of knowledge regarding the time as well as material management.

The common dictum which newbie aspirant (we had given him name Mr Sasi in previous article) follows is : Read all editorials and articles in newspaper Hindu or Times. Mr Sasi starts his reading session early in morning reading each article meticulously and taking notes. The matter he doesn’t get to know is that many articles as well as editorials aren’t needed at all for exam preparation. That is why all aspirants need to go through syllabus thoroughly. In addition to that, he/she needs to ponder the most important issue in the topic stated in syllabus

The articles as well as the editorials need to be categorized by you as ‘needed’ or ‘not needed’ as soon as you see. This can be done by understanding the syllabus. One more thing to keep in mind is the need to know or how much you should know.

 Let me give an example. Say you come across the defects of AAkash the tablet of Indian government. The long list of data and facts would be waste if it is asked as a 2 mark question. The knowledge or thought ‘what question and of what marks can be asked from this topic’ or ‘ is it possible to frame a question from this article’ is of prime importance.

Many aspirants take optional based on hearsay. The earlier trend of getting more marks consistently in certain optionals is disappearing. You need to make a thorough consultation and keep in mind the availability, accessibility and level of competition in an optional before going in for one.

The Part 2 of this article will be published later.

A separate article: How to read Newspaper is there in the blog archive.

Video on Common mistakes by aspirants

Quote:

 The greatest mistake you can make in life is to be continually afraid you will make one.

-Elbert Hubbard

How to start studying for civil service exams?

After hearing all about the civil services, a question remains in the mind of aspirants. How to study for civil services?. The long list of books and magazines are not useful for a humble beginner. I would elucidate some steps which might be of help

Step1 : First see the syllabus. Dont panic and don’t worry. Just see it as you are watching a art film. Do not be excited or desperate seeing the jargons. It is to make you aware of what is actually civil services.

Step2: Start reading newspaper. The newspaper is something in which the happenings of past things occur. For the ultimate newbie, start with the headlines. At first even headlines can be heavy. Just see it. You don’t need to read all headlines. Start reading national, international headlines. Don’t read all the local politics, or the fashion page; the upsc isn’t interested in knowing if bebo is size zero or johny has 6 packs.

Step3: Start with ncert books. The ncert publishes books which are easy to read and these books do not cause indigestion even for the ultimate newbie. Start with the ncert books of geography, civics, etc from standard of ninth. If the single letter class text make you feel silly, then go for the tenth standard books.

The above three steps are the first steps for creating a big stairway. When an aspirant asks – how do i start – the answer is slowly. Start slowly, start with headlines (national, international headlines), ncert books, and seeing syllabus (without fear).

Many aspirants keep on asking, how to start a thousand times. Instead of keeping on asking, go and start. See if its for you. If its not, there is nothing to be worried. There are unlimited number of jobs and options in life. Don’t start with dialogues like , “ i will do this or die”. Those are for loosers. Start with “ I would try this, see if it suits me; else bye bye”.

If you have found the toddler steps 1, 2 ,3 interesting then you have passed the KG section in UPSC. Game abhi bhi baaki hai dosth.

Now you can move on to the next step. Which i will cover in another post.2