8 Expert Tips to Prepare for General Awareness section in various Competitive Exams

General knowledge, as a subject, is very broad. The biggest question most of you face while studying for this section is where to start the preparation. There is always a huge amount of information available that seems important. Since you shouldn’t miss out any necessary topics or forget how to go about this section, here are our Expert Tips to Prepare for General Awareness section in various Competitive Exams.

Here are some of the important General Awareness topics for various competitive exams:

• Countries Currency & Capital
• Science and Technology
• National Parks & Wildlife Sanctuaries
• Power plants
• Discoveries & Inventions
• Bank Taglines & Headquarter
• National & International Organisation Headquarters
• Dams
• Rivers
• River Tributaries & other Names
• Important days
• Stadiums
• Airports
• Sports
• Awards
• Indian states and their festivals
• Deserts
• Mountains
• Ocean
• Lakes
• Indian history Dates
• State wise Crop & Mineral Production
• Temples , mosques
• First in world or India
• Caves, Valleys
• Palaces
• Waterfalls
• Tribal Groups
• Country Parliament Name
• Indian Politics
• State and International Boundaries

These are only a few topics and may vary with different exams. It’s advised for the aspirants to go through the exact syllabus of the exam which they’re preparing and then start studying ‘General Awareness/Current Affairs’ section accordingly.

Before you start preparing, let’s understand why is this section so important to prepare.

Testbook provides awesome current affairs capsules, which helps the aspirants to walk through the topics all at once.

Why is it so beneficial to prepare well for General Awareness section?

As you can see in the above table, General Awareness section is present in many of these railway, bank as well as other government exams. It carries a good weightage in each of these exams, which is why it’s super-important to prepare well for this section.

Have a look at the advantages for preparing General Awareness section:

1. Time Saver:

You don’t have to do any calculation, therefore GA section can be easily attempted in less time as compared to other sections.

1. Low Chances of Getting Negative Marks:

If you know the answer you will directly mark it else you will leave it. Therefore, there are no chances of making the wrong answers.

1. Boost in the aggregate score

You can score well if your preparation is good and it will directly increase your aggregate score.

By now, you would have known how important it is to prepare General Awareness section thoroughly – be it any bank exam, railway exam or any other government exams like SSC CGL or SSC CPO.

The below tips will help you to kick-off the general awareness preparation.

Tips to prepare for General Awareness Section

1. Make your own notes

• Prepare notes on topics like Indian Politics, History, Science, Geography, Constitution, monthly current affairs etc.
• These short notes will help you quickly revise during the last moment.
• The Static GK section from the Testbook Blog can be very fruitful in the preparation of notes for these competitive exams

2. Consistently read newspaper

• You should go through all the breaking news and highlights at the end of the day.
• Take out time for watching the news that give you the whole day analysis in a short and crisp manner.
• If you find any news important from exam point of view then note it down in your own notes.

3. Read other sources of news such as Magazines and books

• Read good magazines and books that can boost your knowledge on daily events.
• Along with the common journal, you need to read the newspaper as well. It will give you a better hold on current affairs.
• This practice will help you to be updated with the daily events.

4. Solve lots and lots of Online GK Quizzes

• Check your memory by attempting Current Affair Daily Quiz from link below

5. Make your own tricks to remember GK notes

• You can make use of mnemonics which means ‘to remember’. It’s a Greek word which means that it’s an abbreviation or an image which helps to remember something.

For e.g.

There are 29 states in India. Assume that there are at least 5 national parks in India. So, in all there are 145 national parks. It’s a daunting task to remember 145 names of the national parks.

To make this task easier, we will use the story-based mnemonic to remember the national parks in Tamil Nadu.

Below is the list of National Parks in Tamil Nadu:

1. Gulf of Mannar Marine National Park
2. Guindy National Park
3. Indira Gandhi (Annamalai) National Park
4. Mukurthi National Park
5. Mudumalai National Park

TRICK/MNEMONIC 

The above underlined words are the focus words – the ones from which names/part of the names of the national parks start. Now read the entire mnemonic and back track to the above-mentioned list of the national park names and try to link these two. In this was, you can create your own mnemonics.

6. Be positive and do not bring negative thoughts:

You need to stay peaceful as it  helps to build your attention & memory power.

7. Believe in your memory

Believe in your memory (Never think you have an awful memory) and keep    practicing.

8. Download Current Affairs apps on your mobile

In today’s mobile era, there are millions of mobile apps which are very helpful. Download your favorite current affairs app and go through it daily. These apps also provide online quizzes, monthly/weekly current affairs capsules. Instead of remembering the current affairs in bits and pieces, you can study this section at one go.