Many people have been asking me to write a post on “Answer Writing”. So here it is!
I am not a literary genius who knows how to play with the words. If you have seen my sample answer script which I have uploaded here, you would have realised the same thing.
You need not use any jargon or a high vocabulary set of words in your answers. The only set of vocabulary that you need is something that you can easily acquire from newspapers without any extra effort. If you read the newspapers for about a year, you would have automatically acquired the required vocabulary skill set. I personally did not focus on improving my vocabulary nor did I try and use any jargon in my answers. A word of caution here – if you use words which you don’t normally find in newspapers and which are difficult to understand then there is every possibility of things getting backfired on you. Remember the persons who correct your GS papers are not experts and are largely generalists. They are only aware of the normal vocabulary that comes in the newspapers and if they find anything strikingly different from that or something that they do not understand, like highly technical jargon, then they would simply not award you marks. So stick to plain simple language.
Answer writing should be done for 2 aspects
- to be able to express what you wanted to say clearly
- to be able to think and write answers quickly within the stipulated time
I personally do not believe in writing an answer every day, because you may be able to write a well structured and a high quality answer for one question, with/without a strict time limit. But doing that for 25 questions in 3 hours for 2 times every day, for 7 days in a row with 2 breaks in between is quite tricky. Instead I strongly recommend the aspirants to write full tests for 3 hours and try to maximise the precision as well as the attempt. I feel that test series is all the answer writing practice that you ever need to do.
Whether you adopt a paragraph model or bullet points model is entirely up to you. I used both of these models in my answers depending on the type of question asked. Usually if I don’t have much content, then I would write it in paragraph form. I also did not stick to the rigid “Introduction-Body-Conclusion” format. I only tried to answer to the point and if the question demanded for an introduction or a conclusion, I gave one in not more than 2 lines.
So I wish all the aspirants a very happy answer writing!