Does Reading Comprehension scare you in the English section? What if the passage contains terms like Repo, NAV, P-Notes etc? Reading Comprehension Passages based on Finance/ Economy, are often asked in banking exams. And why not? After all, you’re going to work for a bank and you should be familiar enough with the financial terminologies and concepts. Additionally, if you are able to understand a financial/ economy based RC, you will be able to answer correctly a handful of questions and get precious marks. A majority of banking exams are lined up this year and right now when there is a near-lockdown situation in most of the regions of India, this time is apt to practice & to be ready for these kinds of RC passages.

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First things first, If you are not in the practice of reading a financial newspaper, start doing it right away. Editorials of financial newspapers such as Business Line, Financial Express keep covering the major financial news and provide their perspective on it. When you go through it, not only do you get a deep insight into the status quo of the economy, but it will also acquaint you with the important financial terms & concepts. Once you start dedicating 45 minutes to 1 hour to reading editorials of a good financial newspaper, you will slowly start making sense of the editorials. However, you should keep some tips in your mind when preparing for the Reading Comprehension passage.

Tips to keep in mind while preparing for Finance-based RC

• When reading the editorial of a financial newspaper, please make note of the terms & concepts you don’t know/understand. Write its definition as well. Sometimes, financial newspapers put the definitions of complicated terms/concepts next to them which will help you understand them instantaneously.
• Try writing your own opinion on the news you read using the terms and concepts you understood. This will help you understand the news in a better way and at the same time, it will keep you updated.
• Relate the news you read with real-life examples, for example, if taxes have been increased, try to analyse its impact on your family’s income.
• Keep your Financial Current Affairs updated. While this will definitely help you in the GA section of competitive exams, it will also help you tackle a Financial-based RC in the exam.
• Last but not least, keep solving one RC passage on a daily basis via Quizzes, Mock Tests & Sectional Tests. When solving economy/finance based reading comprehension passage, look out for the mistakes you have committed This practice will make you all the more ready for the actual exam.
• Once you are through with an RC passage, read it properly without any time limit. Try to understand what the author is trying to convey. Also, go through the meanings/ definitions of difficult words/ terms. You don’t need to necessarily memorize their meanings, definitions etc. but try to get an idea of their contextual usage. This will definitely help you with the next RC passage you are going to deal.

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Tips to keep in mind when attempting the RC in Mock Tests & Actual Exam

• Skim the passage quickly and try to get an overall idea of the passage. This will help you help you in understanding the theme and the points made by the author.
• Try to find out what kind of writing style the passage has. Is it narrative-based, analysis, description or criticism? There may be questions on this as well.
• Mentally note down the important points/facts while reading the passage.
• Attempt the questions related to vocabulary/ facts etc. first and then move to inference based questions. The questions belonging to the former category is comparatively easy.
• If you couldn’t understand any term, try getting an idea from the adjacent sentences.

As you must have noticed, practice is the only key to effectively answer the RC questions. The more you practice beforehand, the more number of difficult words/ terms you get an idea of, the more number of ideas/ perspectives you get on a given topic and the quicker you can understand the passage and answer the questions related to it. As is obvious, there is no shortcut to success. You need to go through the arduous task of devoting 45 minutes to 1 hour towards reading a good financial newspaper, solve finance/ economy based RCs, analyze your attempts and give the RC a reread.

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For your convenience, we have put a list of the Important Financial Terms in this article. Go through it and get benefitted. Keep in mind that there is no alternative to practice. Take a Free Mock Test of RBI Assistant Prelims now and check how well do you do in the RC section.

This is all from us in this article. If you have any input/feedback for us, write it in the comments section below. Wishing you good luck with your preparation!