Whether you are preparing for bank exams, management entrances, railway tests, SSC tests, or any other state PSC exams, the syllabus is almost similar. You can find questions from general reasoning and mental ability, numerical aptitude, English language, and general awareness. They all have the same pattern, syllabus and marking systems, only the difficulty level varied. The questions from the English language section in railway jobs may be of matriculation level while that of SBI PO or some management entrances are much more difficult. Like any other part clear understanding of the rules and vocabulary is necessary to solve verbal ability questions. None of these exam boards wants you to be Shakespeare or any native proficiency in the language, they just analyze whether you have professional working proficiency. No need to read through the best books in the literature for just cracking these exams.
The books, newspapers, and digital contents help us to reach this desired proficiency depending on the exams. Here we are giving you a list of best books for the English language section in competitive exams. Since our exams are on digital platforms it would be better if you start browsing through the digital contents. Platforms like “Entri” will help you to navigate through hundreds of questions, videos and notes from different difficulty levels for all competitive exams.
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Best Books for English Language/ Verbal Ability
For any competitive examinations be the government recruitment exams or entrance exams, verbal ability is inevitable. Almost all exams have a section to analyze the candidates’ aptitude in Verbal ability/ English language. While the syllabus for all these tests remains the same, the difficulty level changes. For exams like CAT, GRE, SBI PO verbal ability section is hard compared to other exams.
In every other exam candidates can expect 25-30 questions from this part, and most of the times the pattern is simply repeating. Questions from cloze test and reading comprehensions are easy to crack if you have a little bit of reading ability. Most of the aspirants stumble over the grammar sections, like error correction, passive, active voice questions. To crack these questions you need practice and a clear understanding of the grammar rules. Most of us skip these rules and solve the questions based on our gut feeling making the verbal ability a hard nut.
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Verbal Ability/ English Language in Competetive Exams
We can divide the verbal ability section into:
- Reading Comprehensions (RCs)
- Grammar
- Para-jumbles
- Critical Reasoning
- Error Corrections
- Summary Writing
- Para-completion
- Vocabulary
- Idioma, and Phrases, etc
The syllabus for the verbal ability/ English language section for almost all exams is similar. Only the difficulty level varies. The general syllabus for the English language section in the competitive exams is:
Reading Comprehension, Cloze Test, Para jumbles, Sentence Completion, Phrase Replacement, Error Detection, Fill in the blanks, Inference, Connectors, Vocabulary, Word Usage, Idioms, Phrases and meanings etc
Best Books for Verbal Ability/ English Language
Pick any standard national daily newspaper, like The Hindu or Indian Express. Make newspaper reading your habit, it will introduce to a new world of vocabulary, standard usage of idioms, phrases etc. Newspapers will be a great help while solving the Reading comprehensions, and Cloze tests. Start reading today. Grammar is a hard nut for most of us. If we forget the basics we are doomed, but once you grab it then you can relax in the Verbal ability section. For clear your basic grammar explores the NCERT textbooks. They are good enough for beginners. Once you are familiar with the basics, start solving any previous year question papers. Familiarize yourselves with exam pattern. On the next stage use a timer and try to solve within a time limit. For further study, you can grab any of the following books from the market.
- Objective General English by S.P. Bakshi
- Word Power Made Simple by Norman Lewis
- High School English Grammar and Composition by Wren and Martin
- Objective English for competitive examinations by Hari Mohan Prasad
- Quick Learning Objective General English by R.S Agarwal, and Vikas Agarwal
- English for Bank Exam by S. Chand Publications
- Objective General English by S.J Thakur and S. K Raut
- Wiley’s Exam Xpert Verbal Ability and Reading Comprehension by Wiley Publications
- Descriptive General English by S.P. Bakshi and Richa Sharma
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