How to Prepare Current Affairs for Bank Exams in 2021? — TextBooq

Here we shall learn How to Prepare Current Affairs for Bank Exams through a preparation guide and tips, particularly for the Current Affairs section. The article will arm you on How to prepare current affairs for the IBPS examination. The Institute of Banking Personnel Selection, which is popularly known as IBPS, is an autonomous body. This institute conducts an annual recruitment process for the public sector banks except for the State Bank of India for five posts individually:

• Bank PO or Probationary Officers for Public Sector Banks.
• Bank Clerk for Public Sector Banks.
• Specialist Officers (Scale I, II and III) for Public Sector Banks.
• Probationary Officers for Regional Rural Banks.
• Bank Clerk for Regional Rural Banks.

There are some other exams like RBI Grade B, RBI Special Assistant, NABARD Assistant Manager also follow the same pattern and style of examinations.

IBPS generally conducts the preliminary exam after 30–45 days of releasing the advertisement. Let’s discuss How to Prepare Current Affairs for Bank Exams?

The recruitment process is a combination of three stages of examinations:

• Preliminary examination: This is a qualifying preliminary round for the main examination.
• Main examination: Those candidates, who pass the preliminary exam, qualify for the main examination.
• GD/PI: The final selection is based on the combined marks of Group Discussions (GD), Personal Interview (PI) and Mains exam.

Let’s focus on the Main examination: The main exam includes four sections with an individual time limit and sectional cut off for each.

• Reasoning & Computer Aptitude
• English Language
• Data Analysis & Interpretation
• General & Banking Awareness

Here our focus is on the General & Banking Awareness section. Generally, this section includes 80% of questions from the Current Affairs Section. And 20% of questions are from the static General Knowledge section. However, the distribution of questions may vary.

Why is Current Affairs a Challenging section in Bank Exams?

A student must focus on each section for the selection in Bank Exams. The sections like numerical ability, English Language, Reasoning, Computer Knowledge, General Awareness (Current Affairs and Static GK), bear equal importance for the selection. However, The Current Affairs section is tricky and challenging. This section appears confusing and difficult to most of the students. It is because a wide range of categories and sub-categories are included in the Current Affairs section. Students often get perplexed in How to prepare current affairs for the IBPS examination to score well.

Current affairs are the dynamic issues or events that are occurring around the nation, world. Daily current news is found in the newspapers and websites. But it does not mean that all the events are important for examination. Here you need to learn about the difference between Current News and Current Affairs. Current News also includes entertainment news, political news, road accidents news, news on riots, murders, chaos in society, health and fitness news. Remember these are not Current Affairs. Current Affairs are that current news which is frequently asked in the examination and useful in the growth and development of overall knowledge.

Here is a list of the most important categories in the Current Affairs section:

1. Appointments and Resignations
2. Awards and Honour
3. Government Schemes: Center and State
4. Science and Technology
5. Index and Ranking
6. Important days and themes
7. Defence News
8. NASA/ISRO Space news
9. Banking/Economy/Finance/Business/Agriculture
10. Important Summit/Conference/Event
11. Indian Railways
12. Important Committee
13. Sports
14. Apps and Portals
15. Obituary
16. Places and State in news
17. Environment
18. Books and Author
19. International Affairs
20. Art and Culture
21. Women in News

How to Bisect a Current Affairs Topic?

Well, this is the most crucial part of the avenue of preparation of the Current Affairs. Here you will know How much to read in a news? How to weed out the unnecessary part and most importantly what to read and what not to.

At first, you should note that primarily there are three approaches to read current affairs.

If you know the depth of the preparation of different exams, you will immediately find out how much to read in a current affairs topic for a targeted competitive examination.

Here is a news from ‘ The Hindu ‘

What to study for UPSC and State PSC Examination?

• The significance of the Ken-Betwa river linking project.
• How will the Panna Tiger reserve be damaged by the river linking project?
• Union Jal Shakti Ministry signed a tripartite agreement with the states of Uttar Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh. What is The Memorandum of Agreement (MoA)? How is it different from The Memorandum of Understanding (MoU)?
• Ken and Betwa rivers originate in MP and are the tributaries of Yamuna.
• Rajghat, Paricha and Matatila dams are over the Betwa river.
• National Board for Wildlife.
• Why is Dhaudhan Dam in news?
• Ken River passes through the Panna tiger reserve.

A Model Question for UPSC:

Consider the following statements

1. Ken-Betwa river linking project is a bipartite agreement between Madhya Pradesh and Uttar Pradesh.
2. Ken River passes through Panna Tiger Reserve.
3. Dhaudhan Dam is located in Uttarpradesh only.

Select the Correct statements

a. 1, 2 and 3

b. 2 only

c. 1 and 3

d. 3 only

Correct Answer: b

A Model Question for IBPS and SSC exams

Panna Tiger Reserve is located in which state?

a. Uttarpradesh

b. Uttarakhand

c. Madhya Pradesh

d. Rajasthan

Correct Answer: c

Topics that Should be Avoided while preparing for Current Affairs:

• Political News
• Entertainment News
• Riots, Killing, Murder, Robbery, Road Accident news
• Health and Fitness news
• Local city or village-based campaigns
• Election news etc

Note: There is a little difference in the preparation of SSC, Railways and Bank Exams. For SSC, Railways Exams, you do not need to give that much importance to financial and banking awareness. But you have to put special focus on all possible topics in Banking and Financial Awareness, Economy News, GDP Growth prediction of various organisation, Budget and Economic survey, Agricultural news, Recent Appointments of CMDs and Chairmans of all Financial Institutes, Corporate Business affairs: Merger and Acquisition etc.

How Many Months of Current Affairs Knowledge is appropriate for the IBPS Mains Examination?

Students generally face this hurdle just before the examination and get confused over How many previous month’s current affairs need to be prepared for IBPS? The last three months current affairs from a genuine source would be sufficient. But to remain on the safe side last six-month current affairs should be prepared.

Remember, few topics like Nobel Awards, Economic Budget Planning, Film Fare Awards, Grammy, Oscar, Bafta Awards, Man Booker Prize, Grand Slam winners, Cricket and Football World Cup, Olympics Games are some important topics which are equally important throughout the Calender year.

How to Score High in Current Affairs to Crack the IBPS Examination?

Reading newspapers and following different websites or channels will not make a candidate able enough to tackle the current affairs section. It is very important to make a habit of reading and making notes of current affairs on daily basis. Then comes the self-evaluation part, i.e attempting quizzes. And, we must remember that smart work is always a better option than hard work. So, a candidate must follow some basic step by step rules:

How to Prepare Current Affairs for the Bank exams?

Let’s focus some step by step rules on How to prepare current affairs for Bank Exams and other competitive exams.

1. Consider the exam first: An exam candidate must follow the exam criteria, educational eligibility exam syllabus and the question patterns of previous selection procedures. These points narrow down the area of current affairs to make it specific for the related examination.

2. Background of Current Affairs: An affair does not mean any particular occurrence. The background of a current affair is very important.

For example, Consider this current affair: 15-year-old Indian-American Gitanjali Rao becomes TIME’s first-ever kid of the year. This one-liner is not enough for preparing this issue. Here you need to dive deep into. It is equally important to know why she has got such recognition. She has become TIME’s first-ever kid of the year because of her work, developing a technology to combat issues of contaminated drinking water and cyberbullying. Is this enough? No, if you further search her success story, you will get to know about the app she developed to combat cyberbullying. She developed “Kindly“, an application that uses artificial intelligence that can detect cyberbullying at an early stage. This application is important for the exam too. So is this topic over? Not yet. You have to follow the updates related to Gitanjali Rao, she might get conferred with some new honours in the upcoming days. So keep tracking.

3. Cold Media and Hot Media: A newspaper is a cold media as it presents the news of a previous day or occurrence. A news channel is called hot media as it presents immediately updated news. Both sources of information are important for preparing current affairs. Daily newspaper reading is a very good habit. Newspapers broadcast journalism, which is a technical and detailed analysis of current affairs that have occurred in recent.

4. Check Multiple Sources: For detailed knowledge about a current incident, a candidate must follow multiple resources to obtain the correct information. A journalist is a human and a human is not errorless. So, checking multiple sources of information is highly prescribable.

5. Be Selective: A newspaper or news channel does not present news from an examination perspective. So, a candidate must be selective while reading or watching the news and note it down if it is important for the exam. This practice will enable a candidate to read or watch the news in an optimized way.

6. Revise What You Read: Revision of the previous day’s affairs is too good to forget. Revision with a fresh mind and concentration needs lesser time to remember.

7. Online Tests and Quizzes: Online mock test series helps a candidate to keep practising for remembrance of current affairs. This is necessary to practise seriously. Quizzes also help to remember current affairs playfully. When study becomes playful, everyone gets attached to it.

Best Newspapers for Current Affairs

‘The Hindu’, ‘The Tribune’ and ‘The Indian Express’ are enough for daily attention.

Best Current Affairs Magazine for SSC and Bank Exams

There are many websites and mobile applications out there. Go and check them out. But you should be selective while reading because numerous publications publish Current Affairs Magazine which contains irrelevant and useless points. Do not get entangled between the news points which are not important for the examination. Read multiple Best Monthly Current Affairs Magazine, find out the one or two, which you find easy to grab. Let the students decide which one is the best for them. Here we are empowering you to judge your preparation so that you can be mature enough to select the best one for you.

We, the TextBooq team is focused and involved in presenting Monthly Current Affairs Magazine. However, we are not saying TextBooq’s Monthly Current Affairs Magazine, the best but it is an initiative to help and guide the students at free of costs. We assemble the most important current affairs in a categorised and bulleted structure. To get the most out of it, you must try the Monthly Current Affairs Quiz sections after you finish the Monthly Current Affairs Magazine.

Originally published at https://www.textbooq.in on April 17, 2021.