How to Prepare English for SSC CGL in 2023 : Books, Strategies, Structures
After completing graduation, many students in India start thinking of different competitive exams for which they start preparing because they are always eager to get a government job. The Staff Selection Commission holds exams for such graduates and there are 4 subjects/sections when it comes to SSC exam and those 4 sections include English language, quantitative aptitude, general awareness as well as reasoning. English happens to be one of the most important sections out of these because that’s where students can make themselves perform much better and then stand a chance to get selected very easily if they do well in this section. Yes, certain things are there that students must understand when they prepare for SSC CGL English.
There are mainly 4 sections of the English language in SSC CGL exam and those 4 sections include vocabulary, grammar, reading comprehension and verbal ability. These 4 sections must be understood in a great way so that an outline can be very much clear to start the preparation part. As far as vocabulary is concerned, there are certain things that come under vocabulary and those things have been mentioned below:
Vocabulary Section
⦁ Synonyms and antonyms
⦁ Spellings
⦁ Idioms and phrases
⦁ Fill in the blanks
⦁ Cloze test
⦁ Phrase replacement
⦁ One word substitution
Grammar Section
The next part is grammar part because that’s what becomes important for the students and they must understand this part very carefully as there can be certain rules which will require very careful attention for those students to make sure that they get the correct answers to their questions.
⦁ Phrase replacement
⦁ Direct-direct speech
⦁ Active-passive voice
⦁ Sentence correction or error spotting
⦁ Fill in the blanks
Reading Comprehension
Reading comprehension is one of the topics where students get stuck a lot and they need to understand that there are a few very important aspects of reading comprehension such as going through difficult text to understand and everyday reading practice to make the preparation well.
Verbal Ability
⦁ Sentence jumbles
⦁ Para jumbles
How to improve vocabulary section?
⦁ Go through thesaurus
⦁ Practice questions online or through books
⦁ Maintain a diary of word list
⦁ Find out the new vocab from newspapers
⦁ Make any sentence with a new word
How to improve grammar section?
Grammar is something that is going to take away most part of your time and you have to understand this part that requires careful attention. There are different types of grammar books available in the market which can be very much helpful and in this particular article, I will mention some of the books which will cover all the aspects of SSC which can be very much helpful for students.
What are the ways to improve your reading comprehension skill?
If you want to do better in reading section, you will have to start reading and there is no any other shortcut. Start going ahead with the editorial part of the newspapers and you can also make sure that you read incident-based articles. You can also go through some of the books to make sure that you understand them very well because reading is all about understanding what is written and then going ahead with the questions based on those readings.
What are the main things to do while you are in the process of preparing for SSC English?
⦁ Start with a plan.
⦁ Make a habit of learning through reading everyday.
⦁ Understand your weak areas and act accordingly.
⦁ Do the regular practice of English language and give certain time which can be anywhere between 3 to 4 hours everyday because you also have to go through other sections of SSC exam.
⦁ Be punctual for preparation.
⦁ Understand the question before going through the answer.
⦁ Never go through guess work in English because everything is concept-based as it is with other sections of SSC CGL.
What are some of the most important books to prepare for SSC CGL?
Many books have come up in the market for the preparation of English section when it comes to SSC CGL and as per my understanding, I have given the list of a few books which can be very much helpful if you want to prepare for SSC English and they will definitely take your English to a good level. Some of these books can also be found through online mode in the form of PDFs and if you can afford to buy them as a hardcopy, that will add extra boost to your preparation because you will find it easy to mark the questions and answers which can be important for you and which will be important for your revision section as well. Let us know some of the books given below:
⦁ Objective General English by SP Bakshi
⦁ English for General Competition by Neetu Singh
⦁ Wren and Martin (Revised by Dr. N.D.V. Prasad Rao)
⦁ Competitive General English by Kiran Prakashan
⦁ A Mirror of Common Errors by Dr. Ashok Kumar
⦁ Word Power Made Easy by Norman Lewis (To prepare for vocabulary section)
⦁ Objective English for Competitive Examinations by HM Prasad
⦁ Perfect Competitive English by VK Sinha
⦁ English Grammar and Composition by KP Thakur
Also read- Idioms with Numbers by Zahid Sir
I’m Mohammad Zahid Hussain, a Content Writer, Spoken English, IELTS and PTE Trainer. I’m also a Professional English-Hindi and Hindi-English Translator, Editor and Proofreader. I’m a graduate from Jamia Millia Islamia University, and I’m here to share my articles on a wide range of topics to help you enhance your insights into various things to provide you with factual information and creative analysis.
