Today, I will share some of those tips and tricks with you folks which I created and employed during the preparation of written exam of CSS. I thought of some of the tips and tacks on my own while I read some of them on internet and in magazines. Hope so, they will be beneficial for you guys as well.

English Precise and Composition:

While people note down difficult words with their meanings in diaries and registers, I never did. Instead, I wrote three to four synonyms in front of each new word I came across while reading the newspapers and magazines.

What happens most of the times is that synonyms of different words are used by the columnists and reporters and the aspirants (read readers) always think of them as new words feeling confused, annoyed and angry.

So if you write synonyms, you do not have to go through the hectic and tedious process of searching the meanings of the same words again and again in the dictionary. In this case, thesaurus will be your best friend.

Furthermore, I crammed about 1500 idioms and phrases in general. Now, everyone who crams idioms knows that whenever you begin to write on something, you cannot recall the appropriate idioms needed to explain the issue or topic at hand. One founds oneself all at sea in such situation.

I sorted out a solution for it. I extracted some 100 idioms out of that 1500 idioms list and scribbled them down in a diary. These 100 idioms were those ones which explained general words and situations.

For instance, the idiom “on the face of it” replaced the word “apparently”, the idiom “kick the bucket” was used in place of the word “die” and similarly, the idiom “Once for all” became the replacement for the word “finally” etc. Got it?

All of us know as well that we cannot recall the appropriate words to write in time as well. There is also a way out for it. I wrote a “vocab-graph”. Vocab-graph means that I took all the difficult terms and words and created a topic like “Pak-India Relations”. Then, I wrote a general article about this relationship while employing all those difficult words which I had collected and written in my vocabulary diary till that time.

In this way, I came to know not only about the usage of those words but it also helped me to recall the proper words at the proper place in the future.

Preparation of Objective portions:

I never wasted my time in the preparation of the objectives of any subject except Everyday Science. Frankly speaking, you can never get the 20 out 20 MCQ’s right even if you cram some 2000 MCQ’s per subject unless you are a genius (which most of us are not, I assume). So, it is a futile exercise to spend your precious time in cramming MCQ’s of each subject.

Hand writing:

Beyond question, your handwriting plays a vital role in fetching high score in any of the papers of CSS exam. Though writing factual and logical answers does contribute towards making a good impression on the examiner but neat and clean hand writing can even decide your fate in a subject.

Even in your practice sessions, always try to write neat and clean. Do not make yourself habitual of using ink removers and whiteners. Try not to add (write) the words and phrases above the sentences which you had forgotten or missed to write. As they say, “old habits die hard”, so it is better not to cultivate such bad habits before writing in the papers.

Current Affairs:

If you cannot go through the pain to make a register in which you should paste the pertinent newspaper cuttings, there is an alternative method as well. Whenever you read the newspaper, simply underline the important facts, figures, quotations and incidents with the help of a ball pointer. On daily basis, before going to sleep, just read those underlined sentences.

Unconsciously, your mind will absorb all those facts. You might not remember or recall them till the day of your current affairs paper but when you will sit to attempt your paper, you mind will bring out everything that you need to write pertaining to the topic at hand.

Pakistan Affairs:

Aspirants have a hard time in cramming and remembering the historical facts and figures in this paper, specially the dates and years. I had the same problem as well. So I wrote a timeline of all the important incidents from 1857-1947. A timeline is a way of displaying a list of events in chronological order. For instance,

Shah Waliullah = Feb 21, 1703 (Delhi) – Aug 20, 1762 (Delhi)

It helped a great deal in not only remembering all the dates but also in narrating the historical background of any incident in the freedom movement.

Thankyou very much very novel and effective approaches you shared with us. I am not good at cramming things. The only way that works for me is to remember associations of things. The idea of thesaurus is very good.