How to Prepare for Telangana TSPSC Group 2 exams

In fact what should be your strategy to succeed in Group 1, 2 3 or 4?

1.     First thing to have is determination to achieve the TSPSC Group 2/TSPSC Government job, syllabus, books/material/coaching institutes are secondary, and you need to chalk out a clear strategy to achieve your target.

2.     Proper planning is required to achieve this target, planning could be time plan/segregating your syllabus/selecting a good coaching institute/selecting or buying a standard book.

3.    Try to revise every lesson or topic after its completion and go for a grand test of every section in a paper (there are lot of institutes who are conducting grand tests).

4.    Try to read complete syllabus for couple of hours, that way you will know how to segregate your syllabus because lot of topics are replicated across papers

A) Planning:

1. Try to sleep early in the night probably between 10 or 11 Pm as we need 6 to 8 hours of sound sleep, try to get up by 5 am in the morning and go for a walk/Jog for 30 to 60 min and if possible 20 minutes of Yoga (as it helps your mind to get refreshed).
2. Spend quality time with books rather than sitting for unlimited hours. 6 to 8 hours of quality time is more than enough for completing the syllabus and don’t sit for 12 to 14 hours just for sake of completing the syllabus in hurry.
3. Take break for every hour as it soothes and refreshes your mind, if tired sleep for 30 minutes or so.
4. Try to avoid reading on Sunday’s; reading continuously also is tiring and boring.
5. Try to cover 2 papers simultaneously every day so that you can cover most of the syllabus.

B)  Segregating the Syllabus or how to read complete syllabus in time?

This aspect is most challenging and this is where your fate is decided.

“You are Master of your own Fate”

Group 2 is a 2 stage exam: 1) Written examination and 2) Interview

Written exam: Multiple Choice Questions

We have 4 papers and each paper with the weightage of 150 marks i.e. 600 marks for 4 papers

Paper1 – General studies and General Abilities

Paper2 - History, Polity and Society

Paper3 – Economy and Development

Paper4 – Telangana Movement and State Formation

Interview:

It carries 75 marks, here they will see your personality rather than asking questions related to subject (they will ask questions on subject as well so be prepared). The main aim for putting interview is to filter out the best guy from big chunk of students. Not sure why Telangana government is still persisting with interview because Central government asked not to conduct interviews from group 2 stages but our duty is to prepare for interview.

Try to complete Paper1 and Paper3 early because in Paper1 we have different topics that we encounter in our daily life, so it is a daily process of updating for us.

Example: Paper1 has topics like Current affairs, disaster management, public policies, general science where we need to update ourselves daily. We also have topics like Social exclusion which is part of paper 2, cover this when you are preparing for society section.

We also have Basic English topic in paper2 which is of tenth standard for this try to read NCERT or SCERT books. You can buy them or you can download them online on your desktop or mobile which is for free, if not buy Objective General English by Aggarwal.

Paper 3: It is completely different from previous syllabus they have kept Indian economy same but included Telangana economy, land reforms, and agriculture sectors and excluded taxation. They have kept new topic in Section 3 as Issues of Development and change which has topics like social inequalities, this topic can be covered when you are preparing for Paper2 section 3 Society topics. They have also included Sustainable development where whole world is discussing about.

Paper 2: Socio-cultural history of India and telangana, Polity and Indian Society

Don’t read everything and anything that you come across in books, they have specifically mentioned that they would be asking about social, cultural, economic, art related work that happened in our history and during king’s rule and after independence. Try to read important incidents related to Telangana during struggle for independence. For example, they might ask you a question like this, who invited Mahatma Gandhi to telangana and where did he first give his speech?

Read Indus valley civilization, Indian history and Telangana history till 1956 so that you can cover little bit of portion from Paper 4 Section 1.

Polity: They kept the same but added couple of new topics and you can also see in Section 2 point 8 Special provisions for SC’s, ST’s and BC’s and also national commission for the same. This topic we can see in Society section. When you are reading about SC’s, ST’S and BC’s read everything from Issues, Policies, Provisions, Laws, Commissions and welfare programs for the said communities. That was you can reduce your time and will be able to cover most the syllabus in time.

Society: TSPSC did a good job by including this topic because a person who will get selected as an officer should have bare minimum sense of our society, when he is serving people he should be able to read or convince or should know about the suppressed classes in society as well as elite class. Officer has to know about the laws, policies, and commissions of different communities so that he will be able to serve people in a good way.

Paper 4 : Telangana movement and state formation – this is the new topic that’s added in group 2 , main aim of government adding syllabus is because each and every applicant should know the roots of telangana state formation. There are lots of books available in the market but try to read and buy standard books written by subject experts.

After completing the syllabus revise again for a month and in last 15 days try to write grand tests so that it will make you ready for examination mode.

Try not to buy all the books in the market, prepare in a strategic way so that you can crack the post.

C)  Selecting a good institute:

How do we know a specific institute is good or bad?

There are no good or bad institutes, I will tell you what I faced in real life, I went to Group 2 coaching a year back with one of the institute which conducts classes on Civils and groups. There was one History faculty with 18 years of experience started teaching, as days passed by some of the students complained to management that they were not happy with his style of teaching. I thought he was good at what he was telling us, but History is one subject that makes everyone sleepy in classes, sure all of you agree with me.

So try to make yourself clear that competitive coaching is different from academics, here they have time- bound teaching and involve multiple batches in different institutes. If you are choosing classroom training then try to squeeze as much you can from the faculty and do not sit idle in the class, try to ask as many questions you like as I said competitive exams are completely different.

We never know from which nook or corner of syllabus the questions are directed to us on exam date, be ready for a fire fighting situation; this time around questions will not be asked directly.

Example: Take Asara Pension scheme from Telangana policies

Everyone knows about the scheme

1.       when it was introduced

2.       which year it was introduced

3.       why they have introduced

4.        how much are they giving for a widow/divyang/old age people

5.       Main reason for introducing the scheme

Everyone has this information but you need to know information beyond this.

Like

1.       How many crores was released last year and this year against the budget

2.       Which district is the highest paid in this scheme

3.       What is the number of women/men/widow/divyang getting the pension under this scheme

4.       Which district or mandal with highest number of women or men getting pension

Try to differentiate from others and think differently.

D) Selecting or buying a standard book:

How do we differentiate a good book from others?

Simple as that try to collect 2 books for each paper, one book from Telugu Akademy and another by a good author who is master in the subject. I will try to provide an example so that you can understand clearly how to select book.

Let’s take example of Group 2 Paper 4: We have seen number of books being published on Telangana Movement, people who are faculty in an institute or college or university or a person who was involved in telangana movement wrote books on Telangana Movement.

Please don’t buy a book randomly, try to do some research on the books as well, best bet would be a book from telugu academy and a book by Dr. Jayshankar or Dr.Kondanda ram. These two people were bare witnesses to the movement. Books by these two and books from academy should suffice our interests; if you have time to read try to pick notes of a faculty from any of the institutes.

Other than books try to read one English and one telugu newspaper, better to follow The Hindu newspaper and any one of telugu newspaper. Better to read The Hindu because it covers most of national and international news also by reading you can improve your English vocabulary which is essential for Group 1 English Paper which is qualifying paper.

Also try to read India 2016 which is published by Govt of India, Kurukshetra magazine or Yojana Magazine.

I will provide list of reference books or study material for Telangana TSPSC Group 2 for each paper in coming posts.

All the very best for your preparation.

Note: Please post comments here or @ pradeep.amanchi@gmail.com, so that i can contact you back.