Making Notes for Bank and Government Exams

Dear Aspirants, In the following article, we have provided useful tips to help you Make Notes effectively for your upcoming Government and Bank Exams.

How does making notes help in Bank exam preparation?

The syllabus of Bank exams is huge. There are multiple subjects and each subject has multiple topics under them. Each topic has a different and unique concept, method of practice, formulas (if any), and shortcut techniques.

It’s important for a bank exam aspirant to learn & revise these crucial concepts, formulas and shortcut techniques in order to successfully clear their exams. This is where the notes come in.

Making notes help in retaining concepts, formulas and shortcut techniques in memory. It also develops your thought process as a reflex and serve as a guide for last minute revision. It is also extremely time-saving. Notes making saves you the time of going back to the study material and reading everything all over again. Notes contain the most important points that you need to remember for the exam, in an orderly manner, which makes it easier to revise.

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What to Make Notes of?

The most recurring subjects among the bank exams are, the Quantitative Aptitude, Reasoning, English Language and General Awareness.

Quantitative Aptitude & Reasoning

While Reasoning tests your logical thinking, problem solving and decision making, Quantitative Aptitude predominantly tests your knowledge and understanding in Math. Mastering the Reasoning and the Quantitative Aptitude sections requires practice more than theoretical understanding.

What you need to make notes of: Concepts, Important Formulas & Shortcut techniques.

Concepts help you brush your fundamentals of the Quant and Reasoning sections, whereas shortcut techniques help you solve the questions quicker and save time.

English

The English section requires aspirants to have good knowledge in Grammar, Text comprehension and Vocabulary to master it.

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What you need to Make Notes of:

Grammar: Note down the most important Grammar rules and examples to help you understand it better. Learning Grammar rules is very important to be able to solve questions from topics like Error spotting, Sentence completion, Parajumbles and sentence jumbles.

Text comprehension: Whenever you read a novel/newspaper/magazine, pay attention to the structure used in their writing. Note down the structures used in newspaper paragraphs, magazines and novels and the differences between them. This will help you solve Reading comprehension & Parajumble questions.

For example: Essays start with an introduction. The introduction contains the brief of the topic. The introduction is followed by the body of the essay, which contains examples, arguments and support for the main idea of the essay. The essay ends with a conclusion, which is the summary of your essay.

Vocabulary: Make a note of every new word you come across, along with its meaning and usage (example sentence). It’s also a good idea to make mind-maps for the words you use.

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General Awareness

The General Awareness section in bank exams can be narrowed down to: Static General Knowledge, Current Affairs, Banking & Financial Awareness.

What you need to make notes of:

Static GK: Static GK refers to static facts about things that have remained the same for a long time, and may or may not change in the near future.

Example: Names of important dams, national parks, wildlife sanctuaries, airports, seaports, nuclear and thermal power plants, sports and trophies, etc.

Although there are sources online that provide eBooks to help prepare for Static GK, writing it down will help you remember it better.

Current Affairs: Current affairs refers to anything and everything that is happening in the world at the moment. Usually you’re required to know the current affairs of at least past 6 months or 1 year for bank exams. The questions from current affairs can come from a wide range of topics such as, Geography, Sports, Science & Technology, Art, Biology, Political Science, etc.

Reading newspapers (preferably The Hindu) is considered the best for current affairs preparation. However, mere reading of newspapers isn’t enough. You need to note down the important highlights of the news and try and write short essays on topics from current affairs in your own words, expressing your opinion.

Check- How to Effectively make notes from Newspapers HERE

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Banking and Financial Awareness: The General Awareness section of bank exams lays special emphasis on the Banking and Financial Awareness. Note down all the important Terminologies, Abbreviations and full forms, RBI policies, Financial Institutions, etc.

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How to Make Notes effectively?

It’s important that you maintain a book (hard/soft bound) for note making, instead of jotting down the notes in papers, as there are chances of you losing them.

Blindly copying stuff into your book is not making notes. Making notes is a process that needs to be thought through. Don’t create notes mindlessly, it needs to be planned.

Index: It’s a good idea to have an index at the beginning of the notes, in the first page. The index can contain topics and sub-topics of the notes with handwritten page numbers (you will need to hand-number the pages). Index is useful if you’re trying to revise a particular topic. Indexes also help in organizing the notes and maintaining an order throughout.

Chronology/Order: Your notes need to follow a chronology/order. That way it’s easier for you to revise and remember things. It’s also important, that you don’t mix topics. Make topic wise notes and maintain a different book for each section if possible.

Content: Your content is the most important part of your notes making. It needs to be taken from original sources. Understand the concepts and pen them down in the content section in your own words. Keep the content short, concise, readable and to the point.

Notes making is a personal process. There’s no ‘one size fits all’ when it comes to note making. Every individual has a different way of making notes. This is your notes and you will be the one referring to it during revision. So, make sure the notes you’re making is understandable to you.

Instead of using lengthy paragraphs, break them down into lists/bullet points. Write in the style you’re most comfortable in (placement of titles, subtitles, paragraphs, etc.).

The content should contain only the most important points. Cut out the unnecessary points. Your content should contain all the information which is helpful for your exam preparation, so you don’t have to re-read the study material during your revision.

Include concise step-wise explanation of each concept, examples for each of them, short sentences and keywords in your content. Use asterisks and other symbols to organize your content. For example: ‘#’ means important, ‘*’ means explanation provided below, ‘?’ means research needed. Make your notes each to scan through.

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Headings: Include headings and subheadings in your notes to organize it better.

Visuals: Last, but not the least, making notes should be more than just plain text. Don’t make your notes boring. Include visuals wherever necessary, like tables, diagrams, flow-charts, graphs, mind maps, pictures, etc.

We hope the above tips will help you make better notes for your upcoming bank exams.

We wish you all the very best.

Further reading:

SBI PO: Last Minute Preparation Guide

SBI PO: Descriptive Section Preparation Guide

General Awareness Preparation Tips

Preparing for exams like UPSCSSCIBPS POIBPS ClerkSEBIIBPS SOIBPS RRBESIC SSOIB ACIOSSC CGLSSC CHSLetc? 

Ace your exam preparation with mock tests from Oliveboard.  Also, refer to informative articles on exam preparation here.

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