With rising aspirants preparing for CDS each year, the level of competition has also soared. Thus, my article addresses, the format of exam and the tips for aspiring candidates preparing for this exam.
How to Prepare for CDS 2016
Paper I English
- Preparation for Verbal Ability in English: The standard of this paper is easy and as it contains questions from general English. Â Preparation from any grammar book would be sufficient.
- For preparation of vocabulary: Preparation of Vocabulary can be done online or offline. In this type of questions, generally a word is given, followed by four. The candidate is required to choose the word which is the nearest word meaning of the given word. For online preparation, I would suggest vocabulary.com as one of the best website. Candidates can use to learn more words to add in their dictionary.
- For Reading Comprehension: To comprehend means to understand. Reading comprehension tests involves the ability of a candidate to understand the content of a given passage. This section comprises questions based upon a brief passage usually consisting one paragraph. Generally the level of this section is average and so is easy to score more. Our suggestion for this section is to read as many as passages or articles you could read either from the newspapers or magazines and try to understand the theme.
- Tips for reading comprehension
- Read the passage carefully and detect the theme.
- Understand the questions carefully.
- Answer the questions by choosing the right option.
- For error detection and correction: R S Aggarwal’s objective General English, Arihant’s General English are some of the books you can refer to prepare for Error detection and correction.
- For Preparation of sentence Completion: In this section the candidates have to pick the most effective word from the given words to fill in the blank to make the sentence more meaningful and understanding. The only tip for preparing this section is the ability to learn the usage of word in a particular situation. To comprehend means to understand. Reading comprehension tests a candidate’s ability to understand the content of a given passage. This section involves question based upon a brief passage usually consisting in a paragraph.
Paper II (General Knowledge)
Preparation for General awareness and General KnowledgeÂ
Tips for General awareness
- General awareness is one of the vast topics and proper preparation is required while preparing for this test. For those who study history subjects from the textbooks, you may find the topics dull and mundane. To resolve this you can browse through the videos provided on the internet based on curriculum of Indian History. As videos are more interesting for preparing History, you can easily understand and quickly recall the events more clearly. For preparing Current Affairs, we would advise the daily newspapers, magazines. You can also subscribe competition magazines like Pratiyogita Darpan to read more on current affairs. For General science, Economics and Indian polity we would recommend Lucent’s general knowledge book.
Paper III (Elementary Mathematics)
Preparation for Aptitude
- The level of Aptitude is getting difficult in CDS, but it’s still the most scoring section in the competition. This section consist Decimal Fraction, Simplification, Average, Profit & Loss, Percentage, Ratio & Proportion and Simple Interest, Geometry and Mensuration. Any school textbooks can be referred while preparing for this section.
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