How to crack General Studies Paper II (CSAT)

1. Comprehension

The Comprehension has become an integral part of every competitive

examination today. The General Studies Paper II (CSAT) 2013 exam contained 8
questions from the Comprehension part. Thus, it is an important part of the
CSAT paper, and must not be left.

Reading and understanding the passage is an art. Most of the reading

comprehension questions were inferential in nature and required a thorough
reading of the passage. Candidates need to develop a reading habit to
troubleshoot the problem arises in comprehension. Reading newspaper
editorials, magazines like Frontline, Yojana is more than enough to sharpen
your reading skills. One has to read in detail with a sheer mind. If you are not
able to get the meaning of the article completely, make a resolve not to move
from the same until it is done.

Reading with understanding consumes time. But if one is practicing it daily

then he can increase the reading speed with understanding. While reading a
passage, underline the keywords, new terminology etc which may help while
answering questions.

The vocabulary, the complexity of articles, reading speed, extracting the actual
meaning and subject-matter is the common bugs which make comprehension
a difficult area. At this point, dictionary plays a vital role. Develop a habit of
reading/ referring to a Dictionary and applying it in daily life conversation. If
you have a smartphone, install a dictionary that makes reference very easy.

Knowing a passage and extracting the actual meaning is the another issue. One
has to understand the given passage objectively and thoroughly. When you
read an article, read it with a preconception and examine carefully to extract
the essence of passage and understand author what to tell us. This will ease
the process of answering the questions like-Important message conveyed by
the passage, With reference to the passage, the following assumptions have
been made, The authors central focus is on etc.
2. Interpersonal skills including communication skills

Interpersonal skills are the skills we use every day to communicate and interact
with other people, both individually and in groups. Communication Skills,
Listening Skills, Stress, Management, Assertiveness, Decision Making, Problem
Solving, Verbal Communication and Non-Verbal Communication are the basic
Interpersonal skills.

3. Logical reasoning

The level of difficulty of the reasoning section in the CSAT paper is not high. A
candidate can solve the questions if one is familiar with the types of questions
in the reasoning section. There is no need of searching books exclusively for
logical reasoning. Daily practice and solving previous year question paper will
help you to crack this barrier.

4. General mental ability, Basic Numeracy & Data Interpretation

This is the area where most of the candidates feel uncomforted especially if
they are not good at mathematics. But the reality is you need not master in
mathematics to crack the CSAT. The questions on Basic numeracy in the CSAT
paper are of the Class X Level. According to the trend, it is very important to
give special attention to this area. The previous year question paper clearly
shows that the scrapped English Comprehension (Class X level) questions have
replaced with Comprehension and General Mental Ability questions .Daily
practice can only bring you success. For some questions, you can even apply
common logic to solve the question. Understanding of the basic concepts and
formulas will enable to crack this section. Refer to a book which covers the
topics comprehensively like Quantitative Aptitude by R S Aggarwal, Cracking
CSAT- Arihant Publications or GS Manual TMH. Knowing the principles and
concepts of statistics are enough to deal with data interpretation section.

Throughout your study ensure that you are giving enough practice time and
attention for General Studies Paper II. The best strategy would be to solve 10-
15 questions daily starting from now, especially complex comprehensions.
Along with that start solving the previous year question paper also. Start loving
CSAT; if you can love your enemy, you already have victory.