NABARD Grade A: Descriptive English (Do’s & Don’ts)

NABARD Grade A 2021 Exam: The English descriptive section is one of the most crucial sections of the NABARD’s phase-2 examination. It consists of three questions which are valued at a total of 100 marks. The total duration given is 90 minutes which is decent, but you will have to practice your answers on a keyboard. You will have to type all your answers for the English section of phase-2. Therefore, it’s better to get the hang of typing, or you will face problems during the exam as your typing speed would be too slow.  Avoid laptop, use desktop keyboards instead.

 We will majorly discuss the mistakes an aspirant makes while drafting an answer. Many students think that descriptive English questions are solely asked to test one’s language skills. However, that’s the partial truth. You need to have good language skills, you should be grammatically sound, but that alone won’t fetch you handsome marks. It is also about your knowledge of the topic and your articulation. Finally, it’s a combination of language, knowledge, and articulation. You need to cover these three elements in your answer if you want good marks in your English descriptive section.  

Five mistakes aspirants make while writing an Essay or Precis

Grammatical, Typos, Spelling, Punctuation Errors

You will lose 0.5 marks for every typing mistake you will make in the exam. Such a marking scheme elevates the importance of typing correctly. 4 typing mistakes will make you lose two marks. That’s too many marks to be lost in just one section, and that too for a mistake that can be easily rectified. And you will be not writing the answer in a Word doc but in a dialogue box that won’t highlight any typing mistakes like Microsoft Word does.  

Titles, Bullets, & Numbering

The biggest myth about writing essays, precis writing, is that they can be written in bullet points or a numbering fashion. While many students think doing so enhances their piece of writing, but nothing could be farther from the truth. An essay is all about the flow of ideas. However, putting titles for each and every paragraph makes it less descriptive. The overall idea behind writing any topic should be to discuss the problems, different angles and aspects, consequences, possible solutions, etc.

Adherence to the Word Limit

Students often miss out on this critical criterion which every examiner looks at while checking your answers. In order to avoid this mistake, you should follow the standard 10% rule. So, what’s this 10 per cent rule? 

If the essay question specifies the word limit to be 400 words, then you cannot go under 360-370 words, and maximum, you can stretch till 430-440 words. Here 360-370 is 10 per cent below the word limit, and 430-440 is 10 per cent above the word limit. So, this way, you can manage your word limit issue. Moreover, marks will be deducted if you don’t follow the word limit guideline. But you are safe within the boundaries of this 10% rule.  

For precis, the same rule won’t apply. If the precis question mentions the word limit to be 200 words, make sure you finish your precis within that word limit. The examiner won’t evaluate anything beyond 200 words for marking. Contractional skills are required for precis writing.  

For Reading comprehension, no word limit is specified as such. What you can do is that you can decide the word limit as per the number of marks assigned to that very question. For example, if the question is for eight marks, you should write ten words for each mark. In this case, your word limit now becomes 80-90 words.  

Monotonous and Repetitive Ideas, Points

Such a thing occurs when you lack ideas and thoughts about a topic or if you don’t follow a structure for writing answers. Of course, it goes without saying that you should always keep working on your reading skills, updates about current affairs, social issues, etc. But most importantly, you should focus on a writing structure while answering such questions. One such structure is the ‘What and Why’ structure. So, what’s the ‘What and Why’ structure? 

While writing on any topic, you should ask these questions.  

What are the problems?

What are the implications?

What are the solutions?

Why is this happening?

What can be the consequences in the coming future?

So, these points will give you a writing structure that will easily make your answer expressive and non-monotonous.  

Quotations vs Proverbs

Proverbs work better than individual quotations as they will not make the reader or the examiner biased. Proverbs are general or famous sayings, but quotations are based on popular personalities. Let’s say you mentioned a quote once given by Dr Manmohan Singh in your answer, but what if the examiner doesn’t agree or like that person? However, if you would have mentioned a general proverb such as “A cat has nine lives”, it doesn’t represent any person or authority, making it a generalized saying.  

Conclusion

The English descriptive section will need lot of practice. And it’s better that you practice with real-time mock simulations. You can always take free NABARD Grade A mock test of PracticeMock which are as similar as actual exams.

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