Reading newspaper is an essential part of the preparations for any competition exam. In every written examination, we have papers in which questions are asked on current affairs, and these are highest scoring papers if you read newspapers and magazines regularly. In interviews, the reading newspaper helps in answering questions with more confidence as newspaper reading allows you to develop argumentative skills.
(A) Indian Newspapers are thick in size and it is impossible to read the whole newspaper in a one to two hours. Therefore, first of all, you have to decide as to what contents you should read regularly for your preparations for competition exam you intend to appear in next one year or so. Some of the news items you must read in detail are :-
- International / bilateral news items
- Indian and world economy;
- Environment and Health
- Editorial pages
- Articles on science and education
- Sports
The topics like current political developments, local news, (like accidents, murders, theft etc.), Bollywood news etc should be read in brief or may be you like to read only headlines.
We will discuss, some of the above topics in greater detail below.
(B) Secondly, while reading newspaper, you should keep your pen ready and a notebook. You should mark the difficult words in news items / articles. You can also mark the news items which you could not make head and tail of that. You should also scan through important ads issued for public interest etc.
At the end of the newspaper reading, try to find out the meaning of the words which you are seeing for first time. The news items for which you could not decipher, try to discuss these with your father / elder brother / sister or friends to get the background of that news item. This will help you to understand the topic better.
Try to relate it with the topic of the news items with the topics of the current affairs / general studies paper of the competition exam.
(C ) Read the Editorial articles carefully. An editorial article is usually written by senior staff of the newspapers and gives a good balanced perspective of the topic (it can be biased if the newspaper is run by a political organization etc. – avoid reading such newspapers). These contain good English and can help you in improving your English writing skills and vocabulary.
(D) Letters to Editors : These are letters sent from readers to a newspaper, usually in response to an article or editorial. They often include strong opinions either support the article or opposing the views in the article. The letters published are usually valuable and can help in building argumentative skills if you have read the article too.
(E ) International News : This section usually contains important news items across the world i.e. from other countries. Such news items usually contain items relating to relationships between two or more countries (one country can be India), major political changes across the world, information about wars, droughts, disasters, or other events that impact the world and India in some way.
(F) Financial / Business News : This section contains business news affecting economy, monetary policies, stock markets, new guidelines issued by regulators (e.g. RBI, SEBI). This section is of more important for students who are looking for jobs in banks, RBI and financial markets.
Therefore, you should start reading from today itself. Read only the relevant items which will help you in scoring better rating in your exams.
How to Improve English By Newspapers
English is the main language that is given a lot of priority these days because of the increasing competition.Even though you have 80% marks in your Degree and even you can't even speak English then you are left out.The reason is They require candidates who have good Knowledge on English and if candidates with 60% in degree but have good fluency in English then they are immediately recruited.
When preparing for the competitive exams,candidates must concentrate on the following contents:
* Should avoid spelling Mistakes.
* The sentences they try to form must not have any grammatical errors.
* Proper Usage of Grammar must be done.
It is better if you read English News paper daily because if you try to read them then you can learn at least 10 to 15 new words daily and refer the dictionary and learn the meaning of those words and write them in a separate book. Concentrate on the vocabulary part because you will get confused if you don't practice properly.