I am starting the thread to share my views on some issues of critical importance to aspirants. I shall be sharing what I know, any questions and queries are welcome.

Moderators are requested to kindly merge the a thread in this section, titled "WHY AND HOW TO READ A NEWSPAPER" , in this thread.

WHY TO READ A NEWSPAPER


Following are the pros of reading a quality paper on daily basis, in my opinion.

1- You stay in synch with what's happening around the globe, the core purpose of reading news, will help you in Essay, PA, CA, Islamiyat. You get to note imp statistics, figures, quotes, views and analyses on major issues.

2- Reading the paper daily broadens your mind and analytical skills, when you go through opinions and analyses by top writers of Guardian, Telegraph, NY Times, you analyse an issue critically, learn to develop your own opinions which are novel. This way you can circumvent all Dogars, Ilmis, Imtiaz Shahdis, Safdar Mehmoods, Cram series , Jahangir World Times stuff. You actually are able to write in favour or against ANY topic you are presented with in CA and PA exams. Same goes for the written expression. CA and PA exams demand an opinion based answer which you can't cram beforehand but have to construct with relevant info, stats and a particular expression, during the exam under immense pressure of time and nerves. You learn loads about this stuff from a quality paper

3- When you digest 4-5 pages of some reputed and balanced English daily, it actually imparts you with massive information and stats, vocab etc which you might not find beneficial at that particular moment but it makes its way to your sub-conscious and you won't even come to know of it till the day when you are required to produce a quality answer in 35-40 min in the exam hall. You will be surprised to notice how, under immense pressure of performing and time constraints, you will be able to produce material you never knew you can. Trust me, it happens. It comes through constant reading of some quality stuff for months.

What I recommend: DAWN

You simply can't relinquish the newspaper thing, trust me. It has a MASSIVE impact. You may or may not realize it, but it matters and I can't stress enough.

If it's DAWN, go through the front page, back page, editorial and the 2 international pages, specially the left one which contains opinions and views by Intl' newspapers' writers, plus the business page for just staying in loop with the state of global economy. Monday’s supplement on economy is a MUST. 2-3 questions in each of Current Affairs, Pakistan Affairs and Geography 2, or even a topic in essay, can be prepared by thorough reading of this supplement, noting down imp stats etc. On average, 3-4 articles in each supplement are worth cutting away and preserving from examination point of view.

Finally, in Sunday’s “Images”, articles by Anjum Niaz , Mubarak Ali and Nadeem F Paracha are superb when it comes to information contained, written expression, diversity of topic etc. And the 2-paged feature normally irradiates some social issue. If you go through last one year’s features in images”, it has covered everything ranging from security situation of Pakistan to social ills, very well researched and highly informative.


Making Notes from a Newspaper

In brief, purchase a heavy duty register/notebook. Make partitions in that as per the current issues in the world as well as in Pak. e.g. War on terror, European financial meltdown, american economic crisis, arab spring, south china sea disputes, america's pivot to asia and vision of Asian american century, China's rise and threats to american interests, Japan china island disputes, south china sea issue, Rise of new economies like BRICS etc. On domestic scale, we have countless issues, which you must be well aware of.

When you go through the paper, try developing an opinion on the issue, it does not matter in whose favour. An opinion is never wrong, you can always make it count right by substantiating it with facts and figures, quotes or arguments. Forming an opinion is necessary because (a) it imparts clarity of thought (and this will come handy in interview where you are required to give your genuine opinion) and (b) it cuts your job down greatly. If you have a solid opinion, you will not have to note down pretty much everything from DAWN. You will need to collect only that data which you think substantiates your claims and proves your point.

This way you will have lots of data till the exam day comes, it will all be your own, thus novel, not some academy's golden or platinum notes. Plus while noting all that stuff down, you will have to read almost everything. This, as I said, does make its way to your brain and you will reproduce in on the exam day, in sha ALLAH.

Best of luck.

From UET , Good to know sire :-)

Its good for the aspirants right now , that anyone specially from PSP , initiated the thread regarding guidance .
General questions :

In how much time you prepared , when you actually started preparation .

Now , seeing the time left , how much time an aspirant should give .

What was the strategy for tackling subjects . ( regarding time allocation )

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''Sufficient for us is Allah , and He is the best Disposer of affairs" Al-Quran

I graduated in August 2011, joined KIPS Lahore in Late September and started hardcroe preparation at home on October 1st, 2011. Took exams in Feb 2012 (23rd Feb was 1st exam). So I prepared for around 5 months

How much time an aspirant should give is a highly subjective phenomenon. If someone can allocate 16 hours per day, one should. It is all about studying habits which have developed since school level, one who has never studied for more than 2 hours continuously can't study 12 hours per day. I used to study for around 10-12 hours per day, had no job, or degree, or any obligations at home. After every 8-10 days I used to take a break for 2-3 days.

I did one subject at a time, rather than studying 2 or 3 subjects in parallel. This, in my opinion, saves time, and energies, and helps you focus better as in you form a perceptual set about that subject and are able to focus better. I allocated around a month each to USA History and Geography, 20 days to PSychology, 10 to EDS, around 10-12 to PA, 5-7 to Journalism, 3-5 to Islamiat, and around 10 days for revision, apart from those days I could study nothing (Off Days).

Chalk out a prospective plan as to how many days to be allocated for each subject (decide that after checking the syllabi of the subjects). Set short goals like how many chapters to cover per day and try to stick to those deadlines. Try to cover the subject in the time you allocate to that subject. FPSC syllabus helps you narrow down to what to study from the books you are following, and the past papers should serve to chalk out what areas to focus much on.

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"And how can man die better than facing fearful odds, for the ashes of his fathers, and the temples of his Gods?"

Thanks for taking the initiative to guide the fresh aspirants

How did you cover English section, particularly Essay and precis. Also please could you mention the books of compulsory and optional subjects that you referred.

Respected rubraiz

I must congratulate you on your success., dear i want to listen your views.,what should be study plan as i am going to appear in CE 2015 ?
i have decided to go with IHC, BALUCHI, JOURNALISM., now should i go with Psychology or Geography or Persian ?? what you say sir ?
how to make notes of optional/compulsory subjects ?? and what should be the time table ?

waiting for your views sir ...

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Calm and Composed.

Sir, i have to ask that whether english, in other papers, except of essay and composition papers, matters or not!
As we have limitted time and questions of CA and PA are very lengthy, so we can not focus on our english in these paper.

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winners never quit, and quitters never win.

How to improve English writing skills is one of the most frequently asked questions by aspirants, and they are justified in asking so because correct grammar, use of impressive sentence structure, and a sound expression are must-have skills for CSS Competitive Exams.

Let me first share with you guys FPSC's official take on the quality of English Essay scripts of C.E. 2009

"Majority of the candidates had produced crammed knowledge obtained from available stereo-type sources. They had invalid and expired pieces of information/knowledge without any sense to update it. However, 5 percent candidates showed commendable originality of approach, precision of comprehension and clarity of expression. MORE IMPORTANTLY, ONE THIRD OF THE TOTAL CANDIDATES WHO APPEARED IN THE SUBJECT HAD NO LOGIC OF THE BASIC ENGLISH GRAMMAR, PUNCTUATION AND SENTENCE FORMATION"

If one third (33%) had NO LOGIC of Basic English Grammar then it is quite safe to assume that at least 70-80 % of candidates, even if had SOME logic of grammar, made frequent Grammar mistakes. Another established fact is that around 80-85% aspirants fail the Essay or Précis paper. If we correlate these points, we see that lack of knowledge of Basic Grammar is the prime reason for failure in these exams, thus portraying Essay and Précis exams as insurmountable challenges. They are the bane of every aspirant's existence. But the fact of the matter is that mere correct grammar is enough to get you through, in these exams, unless you make some other blunder.

Correct grammar is not specific to English exams but leaves a good impression in every paper as all the exams are conducted in English (Barring literature and Isl).

Being adept at writing correct English is a MUST for clearing CSS. I have seen brilliant guys preparing for a year, focusing on optionals and working damn hard, only to fail the English Précis or Essay paper. Infact there was a guy with 789 marks in 2012 and he failed Précis' paper. Had he just passed and secured average marks in interview, he would in top-10. Importance of English can't be stressed enough. If one is not good at it, there's no shame in recognizing that as a weak link and putting in some effort to consolidate that. You guys have ample time.

Improving English demands loads and loads of writing provided your English grammar is flawless. The MOST EFFECTIVE TOOL for improving English is writing tons. Start with 1 page articles; get them checked from competent English teachers. If there are oft-repeated grammar mistakes then there's no shame in getting back to the basics, learning tenses, learning how to use punctuations, form sentences and stuff like that.
Once you have learnt, start writing again.

So it goes like:

1- Revisit English grammar. Tenses, punctuations, parts of speech stuff. It is vital that the basics be strong, only then you can build up on it.

2- Start reading some quality English daily. By reading it you will be unconsciously assimilating rich vocabulary, various sentence structures and expressions etc.

3- Start with writing one page articles and get them checked by a competent English teacher. There are no shortcuts to becoming an articulate writer. There's only one rule: write, write and write more. The more you write, the more mistakes you will make while playing with different words, expressions and sentence structures. Rectification of these mistakes will ensure that you don't repeat them. Moreover by writing more, you will be making use of the entities I stated above (Vocab, expressions, sentence structure) which you read in the newspaper. By making use of these in your writing, you bring them from your unconscious to conscious memory. Once that happens, you can make use of that stuff in future at your will. That is the power of writing!

4- When your teacher gives you a go ahead that your articles are error-free, you can move on to writing expansions of about 250-300 words. Plus you can start practicing other items like comprehension, précis, direct indirect etc.

Best of luck.

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"And how can man die better than facing fearful odds, for the ashes of his fathers, and the temples of his Gods?"

Respected Sir
aoa

I appreciate your work but please let me know the names of some handy books in context of your above views.

You got to go to a teacher for learning tenses and grammar basics. Purchase some book which contains tenses and exercises for you to practise.

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"And how can man die better than facing fearful odds, for the ashes of his fathers, and the temples of his Gods?"

I am going to share my strategy for Essay and PRecis soon. Keep checking the thread.

As of optionals:

USA History: Majumdar's 2 volumes + Internet + An Idiot's Guide to USA History

Journalism: Mirza Yousaf + Abid Tehami ( THough I recommend Dr Mehdi Hassan in place of Tehami. Yousaf's book alone will suffice though)

Geography:

For Geography:

Paper 1:

Strahler and Chaudhary Iftikhar's Book for Phy geography, even the latter alone will suffice

Paper 2:

You will have to consult multiple resources, for different portions of Geo 2. There's no 1 book alternative for Geo 2, at least I do not know of any. But recently there's been a publication by Jahangir publishers, a very comprehensive book by Imran Bashir . I have been through it and I was very impressed, it's an amazing effort. For those who do not have the luxury of time, go with that book. For those who can spend around 35-40 days on Geog, must buy this book and merge it with the following resources.

Grab Deblij's book on human geography to grasp the fundamentals. It is not much detailed though. So you will have to make extensive use of internet, especially for Human and Economic Geography, to make detailed outlines

For economic geography, there is a book on World's Economic Geography for A Levels by Fazle Karim Khan. It's quite detailed. Apart from that there's a book on economic geography by Nazir Ahmed Khalid as well. Both are good, Karim Khan is slightly better though.

For Regional Geography, I consulted internet for getting basic info and statistics of neighboring countries, used Fazle KArim Khan's "Pakistan: Geography, Economy and People" and Dawn helped a lot as well.

Paper 2 is now more like a current affairs paper. So extensive knowledge of current affairs is imperative as well

In Paper 1, you can skip "Maps". There'll be 3 to 3.5 questions, at least, from "LANDFORMS" Portion, around 1.5 to 2 questions from "Atmosphere and Climate" portion, and around 1 question from "OCeans". 1 question might be there from "Maps" but you can skip that. All in all, paper 1 is doable in around 10-12 days (Fast track approach)

For paper 2, the syllabus is quite lengthy, rather undefined, for me. So make sure that your written expression is really good so that you can compensate for any lackings in facts, knowledge and statistics etc. Paper 2, being very general, should not take more than 10 days (keeping in view 2014's looming exams).

Make lots of diagrams, you must know how to draw world map, various continents, tables, pie charts, graphs, any illustration you can be will be an added advantage.

Psychology:

I suggest consulting 2 books at least for every 100 marks. Following are the books I suggest, others may tell you otherwise

Wayne and Weiten's book for both paper 1 and 2. It is a step ahead of Feldman's book and I recommend it though I myself consulted Feldman (I did not know then that Weiten exists)

For paper 1: Rakhshanda Shahnaz (BA Psychology, part 1)
For paper 2: Zarrin Bukhari (BA Psychology, part 2)


A detailed post for compulsories will follow soon

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"And how can man die better than facing fearful odds, for the ashes of his fathers, and the temples of his Gods?"