Tips in English for Competitive Examinations

This is a guest post by Nishant Verma from MBA Holder (MBA Study Guide for international students) . They are working on MBA Degree worldwide to provide student desired information through their blog. If you would like to write for All Study Guide, Then contact us via our contact page. 

How students prepare themselves in English for a competition Examinations. Reading comprehension is defined as the level of understanding of writing. It is the capacity for understanding fully the act or action of grasping with the intellect. Proficient reading depends on the ability to recognize words quickly and effortlessly. If word recognition is difficult, students use too much of their processing capacity to read individual words, which interferes with their ability to comprehend what is read. A comprehension passage, therefore, is set for testing the reader’s ability to receive or take in the sense of a text by scanning, understanding the meaning of written or printed matter, learning from what one has seen or found in writing or printing.

Merely identifying words on a page does not make someone a successful reader. Reading comprehension tests the reader’s ability to comprehend the content as well as the organization, style and theme of the passage. There is not a definitive set of strategies, but common ones include summarizing what you have read, monitoring your reading to make sure it is still making sense, and analyzing the structure of the text.

Competent Requirements and steps for complete comprehension
Vocabulary knowledge, reading comprehension instruction based on reading strategies and practices are critical to effective reading comprehension.
One strategy for reading comprehension is the technique called SQ3R. This stands for Survey, Question, Read, Recite and Review.

Read the passage once as rapidly as possible to determine the main idea before you look at the questions. Don’t worry about words you don’t know at this stage. Underline the words that you do not understand to facilitate a complete understanding of the passage. This will enable you to solve the vocabulary questions quicker. Look through questions carefully. You are advised to keep the order in which the questions appear in the test paper. Read intensively the portion relevant to the answers. Concentrate on the vocabulary items and puzzle out the meanings of any words you do not know from the context.

Before finalizing the answer, check the questions again to be sure you have really understood them. Different types of questions you can expect. Some questions are based on what is said in a single sentence. The complex types of questions are based on what is said or implied in more than one position in the given passage. A question may be framed on the passage as a whole. For example, “what message does the write like to convey through the passage’’? Or “what should be the title of the passage”?

Skimming for the main ideas in English
You may not find any clue at a particular part or position in the passage. For answering this type of question you are to depend wholly on your comprehensive capacity. Need to See the Following points:

Determine what clue it gives you as to what the passage is all about. Watch the key words like ‘clause’ ‘results’ ‘effects’ etc. do not overlook signal word such as those suggesting controversy, which indicate that the author is planning to present both sides of an argument.

Concentrate on the main ideas and ignore the details:
To suggest a title of the passage you should keep in mind the given points. It should be simple, clear and meaningful and it should be comprehensive.

How to approach the questions for English Subject:
Look out for words that show cause, effect and purpose in order to arrive at the answer.
If any question starts with ‘why’- you are to look for reasons, explanation and evidence.
Cause words signal the cause or reason for an even an action. Effect words signal the result of an event on an action. Purpose words indicate the reason for an event or action.
In the ‘inference’ question you are required to make a deduction or draw a conclusion based on the information given in a passage. Since there used to be no straight forward questions, it is essential therefore, to read between lines for clues or hidden meaning. You can draw an inference only after reading the entire passage. Sometimes you are required to explain a word/phrase in your own words or substitute a word/phrase without altering its meaning. Even sometimes you are asked to give the antonym of a given word. To do so it is essential to understand the word/phrase in its context.

How to prepare for comprehension for English:
Several theories of vocabulary instruction exist, namely, one focused on intensive instruction of a high value words, one focused on broad instruction of many useful words, and a third focused on strategies for learning new words. Learn to predict, summarize, clarify and ask questions for a passage. This technique has positive outcomes. The use of strategies like summarizing after each paragraph have come to be seen as effective strategies for building one’s comprehension. You will develop stronger reading comprehension skills on your own if somebody gives you explicit mental tools or unpacking text.

There are a wide range of reading strategies suggested by reading programs and educators. They identify positive effects only for a subset, particularly summarizing, asking questions, answering questions, comprehension monitoring, graphic organizer, and cooperative learning. They also emphasize that a combination of strategies, as used in reciprocal teaching, can be effective. Today, most reading comprehension programs teach students explicit reading strategies using teacher direct instruction with additional student practice. Comprehension through discussion involves lessons that are “instructional conservations’’ that create higher-level thinking opportunities for students. The purpose of the discussions are to promote critical and aesthetics thinking about text and encourage full classroom involvement.

To help students comprehend and learn from a specific reading material, they can access their prior knowledge on subject to help them relate to the subject that they are learning at the moment. Making connection is when a student can relate a passage to an experience, another book, or other facts about the world. Making connections will help students understand what the author’s purpose is and what the story is about. You can use connections with any fiction or non-fiction text that you read. Questioning is another strategy that will greatly benefit a student. All our knowledge results from questions, which is another way of saying that question asking is our most important intellectual tool. There are several types of questions that one should focus on: remembering, testing, understanding, application or solving, invite synthesis or creating and evaluation and judging.

Visualization is when students can create a picture or movie in their mind while reading text. Use terms like “mental image” and asking sensory questions will help students become better visualizes. Another way of looking at visualization is to think about bringing words of life.Evaluation is about making judgments on what you read and then explaining why you make those judgments. Some activities to help with evaluating can be as easy as having a small group book talk or having students rate a book. Evaluating non-fiction texts can be done by using a criteria checklist to help students rate a text. Synthesis is putting the pieces together to see them in a new way. Students will take what they already know about a subject along with their reflections from a book to create their own interpretation and ideas about a certain text. Lastly it is true that students need to be most careful.