How to study Current Affairs
Opinions are personal. Read at your own risk!!
From my experience and understanding, I wish to give you
these advises.
- Current affairs syllabus for prelims and mains is almost common.
- But the approach is different.
- For mains we need to do analytical study of issues while for prelims we should focus on facts, statements, locations, etc..
CA for Prelims
- Importance of Current Affairs in Prelims till 2014 was low. Hardly 10 – 15 direct questions and few additional ones depended on knowledge of Current Affairs. (The Hindu, Yearbook)
- Cost to Benefit is very low: One has to spend lot of time but still questions asked are few.
- 50 – 60 % questions in prelims are directly based on static portion and other 10 – 20 % are indirectly related. (Culture – The Wonder ThatWas India Vol-1 and Vol 2, Sri Teja youtube channel, Modern History – Spectrum History(Pre-1857 topics present) Modern History – Spectrum History(Pre-1857 topics ABSENT) , Polity– Laxmikanth, Economy – mrunal.org, Ramesh Singh OR Sanjiv Verma, Environment – Shankar IasAcadamy, General Science – NCERT; NCERT basics must for all the above topics.)
- About 5 – 10 % questions will fall from sky and all most all aspirants will leave them unattempted (wise thing to do).
- So it would be wise to first finish Static Books which take less time and pay more dividends.
But is it wise to entirely ignore Current Affairs?
NO
Why?
CA for Mains
- Most of the mains questions heavily depend on CA knowledge. (Compare both prelims and mains question papers)
GS 1
- Topics 1 – 5 are ‘Static’. In Freedom struggle: points related to “Important Contributors” might be available in newspapers. For Example: On birthday of Ambedkar, Bose etc..newspapers give some good points.
- Geography: I have given a detailed strategy in my previous post.
- Paper 1: Roughly 60 % Static and 40 % CA. Can vary from year to year.
Booklist
- Topics 1 – 4 same as prelims.
- Topic 5: World History: NCERT OLD (Available on mrunal.org). From world wars till present – Norman Lowe (Topics like colonization,decolonization and Induatrial Revolution not given in this book)
- Topic 6: Bipin Chandra – India after Independence (PDF available on net) OR Ramachandra Guha . [Selective Topics only]
- Rest from NCERT.
- Geography given in detail in my previous post.
GS 2
- Topics 1 – 9: Base can be built from ‘static’ and a complete answer can be framed only with CA knowledge.
- All others topics heavily depend on CA knowledge.
- Paper 2: Roughly 30 % Static and 70 % CA. Can vary widely from year to year.
Booklist
- Indian Polity by Laxmikanth (Easiest and the best) is enough; But if you wan’t more you can go for DD Basu.
- Topics 17 - 20: mostly CA. Basic knowledge can be acquired from NCERT (Political Science Class 11 and 12) and Internet or Books like Rajiv Sikri (PDF available on net)
GS 3
- Topic 4 is completely available in geography books like Kullar
- Static part is very important to understand basics. But mains paper depends heavily on CA knowledge.
- Paper 3: Roughly 20 % Static and 70 % CA. Can vary widely from year to year.
Booklist
- Mrunal.org Youtube videos, Ramesh Singh OR Sanjiv Verma. There may be other good books but I don’t know about them.
GS 4
Booklist
- Lexicon Book on Ethics - Definitions and overview of topics from syllabus.
- Performance in this paper depends not on your ethics and morality but on your Opinion making ability, your writing and presentation skills.
- General Issues can be good examples and fodder points. CA knowledge very important.
0 comments:
Post a Comment