A Complete Guide for SSC CGL Tier – I 2018

For the exam of SSC CGL 2018, you have more than half of a year from now. This much time is really enough for qualifying this exam if you are doing certain things like – studying the right topics, being regular with your studies, preparing the notes, having enough books or online study material and also having a positive attitude and a great strategy. But besides all this, the first thing that you need to know, before starting with your preparation for the SSC CGL 2018, is about the subjects to study and about the syllabus of each subject.

What to study?

Here in this article, we will be discussing about the pre exam or the tier 1 of SSC CGL only. For the tier 1 examination, there are four subjects that you need to study and these are – General Intelligence Reasoning, General Awareness, Quantitative Aptitude and English Comprehension.

These are the four sections that you will face while giving the tier 1 examination. All these sections are divided into equal number of questions that is 25 questions for each section and a total of 100 questions. The mark allotted to each question is 2 marks, which the total tier 1 examination consists of 200 marks. And you will get a total of 75 minutes to answer these 100 questions.

Now let’s discuss about how you have to study each subject to clear this tier 1 examination. Now if you are someone who has joined any coaching institute for this, well and good for you. But if you are someone who either doesn’t want to or can’t join such institutes and want to study home by yourself, then this article is going to help you a lot with all the sections.

General Intelligence Reasoning

Let’s first talk about the first section which is General Intelligence Reasoning. For the reasoning section, you have to cover all kinds of reasoning that is – verbal reasoning and non – verbal reasoning. Now, if are someone who loves to read by books then some books that can help you with reasoning are – M. K. Pandey’s book for reasoning and Verbal and non – verbal reasoning by Dr. R. S. Agarwal. Going through these books once will be more than enough for you to clear this section in the upcoming SSC CGL 2018.

For studying reasoning, you can also opt for online video lectures. There are some online channels that can help you really well with your studies. Some such channels are – Mahendra Guru and SSC Adda. They also have their own applications for mobile phones and you can download them from playstore.

Previous year papers are also a very good option for preparing for reasoning section. As the types of questions and question patterns have not made any changes since a very long time.

General Awareness

For this section, the first thing that you have to do in any situation is reading the newspaper on a daily basis. As the general awareness section also contains some questions related to current affairs and there is no better way to study current affairs then the newspaper. You can also read the e – newspaper.

After covering the current affairs portion, the next topics that need to be got covered are History, Geography, Polity and Economics. You can read all this by purchasing the NCERT books for these subjects of from 6^th to 10^th standard.

For the GS part you can go for either of the following mentioned books – Lucent, Manorama Yearbook and Kiran’s SSC General Awareness. Again you can take help for your preparation through online channels.

Quantitative Aptitude

For the mathematics section, what you need to do first is to make your basic concepts strong. You can do that with the help of NCERT’s mathematics book from 6^th to 10^th standard. If you already know the basic concepts very well, then you need to speed up your calculation.

The speed is a very important thing in any of such examinations. For boosting your speed, you have to practice as much as you can and for practicing, the best book that can help you is the Dr. R. S. Agarwal’s quantitative aptitude. You can also get help from the online channels that I have already mentioned above.

English Comprehension

English is a problem for many aspirants. Now if you are someone who is not that good in English or if you are a Hindi medium student, the first thing you people need to learn is the basic grammar concepts. For improving the basic grammar the best book that can help you out is Wren and Martin’s High School English Grammar and Composition.

Now if you are someone who is above the basic level and just need to practice more for making yourself even better, go for the book called Plinth to Paramount. The level of English grammar is this book is quite above the basic level and is really a good option for practicing.

Now if we talk about vocabulary, the Plinth to Paramount is the best book you can use. You can also learn the root words for learning the vocabulary. You can get hell lot of root words on various online websites and online video channels.

The Reading comprehension, reading English newspaper is the best approach you can follow. Now there are some people who will say that they don’t understand the meaning while reading the English newspaper, well my advice to them is keep on reading the newspaper, and eventually you will start understanding the meaning.

Since you have enough time for the exam, you can also try listening English songs or watching a English movie or English television show with the subtitles in English. This will also help you developing the English speaking skills.

Previous Year Papers

Another important thing to do is to buy and solve as many previous year question papers as you can. This is going to help to really very much, as the type of questions and the pattern of questions has not been changed by the SSC since a very long time. This will also help in practice and you also get to know about the level of difficulty of the questions that you are going to face in the actual examination. Best book for previous year question papers is the Kiran Publications Previous Year Question Papers for SSC CGL.

Online Tests

Last and the most important thing to do is taking online tests and then going for the analysis. This can help you in multiple ways. Firstly it will make you feel as if you are taking the real examination. Secondly, you can judge yourself by looking at the analysis. Thirdly, will help you in understanding that what type of questions or the section you need to work on.

There are many such tests available for free on various websites and if you wish to you can also buy a test series for the tier 1 exam of SSC CGL 2018.

All The Best!!