How To Crack English Section | SSC CGL Tier-II

 Hello, Dear Students!! You are aiming at a govt. job and you are all preparing for SSC CGL Exam. A job or our career choices define our lives, hence we all need to make wise and informed choices. Jobs offered by SSC are very esteemed and prestigious. You all have a great shot at such wonderful and powerful jobs which will give you a sense of achievement in life. CGL Exam is a three tier process. There are total four papers in CGL Tier-2 exam namely; Paper-1 (Quantitative Abilities) and Paper-2 (English Language and Comprehension) are compulsory for all candidates, but Paper-3 (Statistics), Paper-4 (General Studies Finance & Economics) are optional. Today, we will study the smart strategy to crack English Section with highest marks. Before we start the strategy, we need to understand the exam paper, question types and the topics which carry more Weightage. 

We divide SSC CGL Tier-2 English mainly into 3 parts. 

Section-1: Vocabulary Section 

Section-2: Grammatical Section 

Section-3: Comprehensive Section

Section-1: Vocabulary Section

This section is very interesting because you can easily score maximum marks in Vocab section. All you need to do is just Read English Newspaper, magazine or any article written in standard Engish. Once you understand the literal and figurative meaning of the English words, it would be easier to answer correctly all the questions based on Synonyms, Antonyms, One-word substitutions, and idioms/phrases. The only trick is to revise it daily without fail.The revision should be very intense and exhaustive.The Hindu Newspaper Editorial vocabulary, read all these words daily just 30 min. and you will cover more than 100 words, you will find all these words in the exam. For one word substitutions and idioms, you should practice previous years questions.

Section-2: Grammatical Section 

Grammatical part solely depends on rules. Once you remember and understand all the important rules, this part can we cracked very easily. Again, revision is the key here also. Most of the grammatical part is made of Parts of speech. You need to once go through all the parts of speech. This grammatical part plays an indispensable role in every type of questions in English section. Learn all the tenses and its usage. Conditional sentences- in every exam questions are asked from this topic in the form of fillers, error detection or sentence improvements. I have provided study notes on all grammatical parts and tenses, study these notes and attempt all the error detection and fill in the blanks questions correctly. If you are studying Noun, then learn all the rules regarding Nouns, and you can correct all the questions correctly. 

Section-3: Comprehensive Section 

For these type of questions, you need to solve 5 comprehensions and cloze tests daily. Such questions are asked to check your understanding of Engish language especially your reading habits. If you are used to reading books, novel etc in English language, then it will come naturally to you. You can easily understand the context and you can answer all the questions based on it. the important trick is to read the questions first, so that you can understand the context of the paragraph beforehand, while you read the passage very first time, you will find the answer to all the questions which you have already read. In this way, you can save precious time by not reading passage all over again for each question. when you study in these days, follow this trick, it will help you tremendously. 

S.No.	Topic	Number of Questions
1	Spot the error	20
2	Fill in the blanks	5
3	Synonyms	3
4	Antonyms	3
5	Spelling/detecting mis-spelt words	3
6	Idioms & Phrases,	10
7	One word substitution	14
8	Improvement of sentences	22
9	Active/Passive voice of verbs	20
10	Conversion into direct/indirect narration	26
11	Jumbled Paragraph	20
12	cloze passage	24
13	Comprehension Passage	30
	Total	200 Questions

Well, as you can see in the above table, the Weightage topics are ‘Spot the error’, ‘Improvement of sentences’, ‘Active/Passive voice of verbs’, ‘Conversion into direct/indirect narration’, ‘Jumbled Paragraph’, ‘cloze passage’, Idioms & Phrases, ‘One word substitution’. You need to give special attention to these topics. Practice and keep revising all the rules and tricks so that you can be prepared for the CGL Tier-2 exam completely. Now, let’s discuss the tricks and approach for above-mentioned topics in detail.

The Important tips for idioms are:

If you see an idiom in context i.e., in a magazine, newspaper or a book, try to understand the context and this will help you with the idiom.Keep an ‘Idioms’ diary.  Every time you hear an idiom or read one, write it down but then make sure that you can look it up at home in a dictionary (English dictionary for learners) and to write it in a sentence otherwise you will forget the meaning. Try to see the idiom in your mind. Can you see the image? Many idioms are made of images.  Try to imagine them and this will help you remember them by seeing the pictures in your mind. Use the idioms you have learned in everyday life. 

The Important tips for Active/Passive are:

Recognizing the Active Structure- Not all sentences can be changed to the passive voice. Only an active voice sentence with a direct object can be made passive. Make the Object the Subject- Restructuring the active to the passive includes two major changes in a sentence’s structure. The first is taking the direct object of the active verb/sentence and making it the subject of the passive sentence. Once you can correctly identify the direct object in an active sentence, you should be able to easily determine the subject of the passive sentence.When changing an active sentence to a passive sentence, the tense of the verb changes. Every passive sentence contains a “be” verb. To change an active verb to a passive verb, use the correct form of “be” and the past participle of the original active verb. 

The Important tips for Sentence Improvement are:

For such types of questions, you need to have a good understanding of tenses, prepositions, phrasal verbs and idiomatic expressions. and most importantly you need to have good reading habits, if you read a lot you can easily understand the context and can correct any wrong usage in a sentence. So, clear all the concepts regarding these points. I will update more tricks and approach for other remaining topics. till keep studying. I wish you good health and success in the exams. One important tip: eat healthy, exercise daily and have a positive approach towards life. If you feel good about yourself, you can accomplish anything. Stay cool, stay positive.