Preparation Strategy for the 36th BCS Preliminary Examination: Bangladesh and International Affairs / General Knowledge (Kaler Kantho)

For preparing in Bangladesh and International Affairs or General Knowledge, you’ll need previous BCS exam questions, at least two job solution papers, newspapers, the internet, at least 3-4 guide books, and some reference books. I’m offering some tips here. Read these and apply them in your own way.

# For preliminaries, stop reading books like Current Affairs, Current World, Today’s World, Economic Survey, etc. At most 7-8 questions will come from very recent topics in the prelims, which can only be found in those books. Among these, at least 2-3 can be answered by reading newspapers. What if you forgive the remaining 4-5? Why do people take such pain for these 4-5 marks—it’s beyond me! Actually, reading those torturous books gives you a false sense of studying. This falls under the category of highbrow procrastination.

# Alongside guide books, read various reference books like Mozammel Haque’s Higher Secondary Civics Paper II, books on Bangladesh’s Constitution (such as Arif Khan’s Bangladesh Constitution in Simple Language), books on the Liberation War (such as Moidul Hasan’s Mainstream: ’71), Nihar Kumar Sarkar’s Politics for Children, Economics for Children, Muhammad Habibur Rahman’s Good for Citizens to Know, Akbar Ali Khan’s Economics of Altruism, Strange & Stranger Economics, Abdul Hai’s two books on Bangladesh and International Affairs, etc. A good technique for reading references for any BCS subject is to read not for knowledge acquisition, but for marks acquisition. To do this, study plenty of questions thoroughly and know very well what types of questions don’t appear in exams. After examining the questions carefully, read reference books ‘selectively, omitting parts.’ This way you can read more in less time.

# Studying questions for 1 hour is far better than studying without understanding for 4 hours. Then it’s possible to cover 4 hours of reading in 2 hours. By studying question patterns extensively, you’ll learn how to read while omitting unnecessary topics. This is the initial stage of starting preparation. Give sufficient time to this. Shake off the notion that you must read everything others are reading. Control your instinct to read everything. Rather than reading an unnecessary topic once, read the necessary topics repeatedly.

# Read 4-5 newspapers online. Read newspapers very quickly. Don’t read the entire paper—only read articles on topics necessary for BCS exams. A newspaper contains at most 2-3 such useful pieces. If needed, save them in Word files and read them later.

# Can’t remember dates and years? Why must you? Nobody can. You have to read them repeatedly. While reading many question sets, such dates will appear again and again. If you can’t remember various facts, revise repeatedly. Instead of memorizing, imprint a mental picture of the question. Read posts with various recent information on Facebook frequently.

# Some international affairs questions lose relevance over time. Skip those. It’s best if you search Google topic by topic. If necessary, type the topic name in Bengali and search. You’ll find answers to almost all international affairs questions on Google.

# Regularly check the international pages of various newspapers. Learn well about recent events, treaties, various awards, names of different international entities, headquarters, place names, international wars and treaties, etc.

# Don’t try to memorize maps! The time wasted doing that could be spent on many important topics for study. I haven’t yet seen any real need for memorizing strange things using strange poems, songs, and verses. This is nothing but pure time-wasting. It’s such time-wasting that you don’t realize it’s time-wasting until the exam.

# Stop the habit of being startled by surprising questions. One bad aspect of group study is that whatever anyone says seems necessary. For instance, “You can’t become a BCS cadre without memorizing the constitution.” Even such wrong statements seem believable. Sitting in or in front of the public library from morning to evening won’t accomplish anything if you don’t study extensively on your own.

# If you can’t remember something, read it again. If you still can’t remember, read it once more. If you still can’t remember after that, stop trying to remember it. Trying to remember one difficult question drives five easy questions out of your head. What’s the point? A difficult question gets 1 mark, an easy question also gets 1 mark.

If you know math and English well, you’ll definitely get good marks in math and English—that can be said. But even if you’re very skilled in general knowledge, you may not necessarily get good marks in general knowledge. So when studying general knowledge, use intelligence, not emotion. In general knowledge, don’t over-exert, but exert strategically. Keep one thing in mind: the less you discuss with someone who knows much more than you in general knowledge, the better your preparation will be. General knowledge is such a subject that even if your knowledge is at zero level, you can work hard to elevate it to the level necessary for BCS exams. Take at least 2-3 tests daily from 2-3 sets of model test guides to assess yourself.

The final word: Don’t prepare for general knowledge with the mistaken maxim that BCS means general knowledge.

This article was published in the ‘Chakri Ache’ page of Kaler Kantho on Wednesday, October 7th.

The link to the article is given below: