General awareness is one of the compulsory sections in most of the competitive exams. One must follow systematic and thorough study plan to clear this section. Reading news dailies and visiting news portals will be very effective for gaining knowledge on current affairs. Reading journals like Competition Success, General Knowledge by Khanna & Verma, etc will also be a good option to gain a better understanding on current affairs.

Preparation Tips

It is not possible to clear general awareness section with one day preparation. Regular newspaper reading is an effective method to clear this section in competitive exams. It is better to refer news dailies like The Hindu, Times of India, etc to get updated with recent happenings across the world. Moreover one must keep track of the important news in newspaper while reading. Jotting down important points in a piece of paper is much useful for future reference. Revising these points on the days before exam is much useful to refresh memory.

Competitive exams may contain GK questions from diverse areas such as politics, sports, business, etc. So it is necessary to give equal priority to all the areas during the exam preparation. Watching news channels is another good method to prepare for general awareness section.

Reading news magazines is also an effective method to understand the day to day current affairs. News magazines like Competition Success, Competition Winner, Pratiyogita Darpan, etc will have details on national and international happenings of previous month. These magazines may also contain objective model GK questions. Solving these questions will help one to evaluate on their present knowledge level.

Reference Books and Magazines

• Competition Success
• Competition Winner
• Competition Success Review: Year Book by P. N. Kapil
• Encyclopedia of General Knowledge & General Awareness by R. P. Verma
• General Awareness and Current Affairs Digest by Krishna Reddy, M Laxmikanth
• General Knowledge by Khanna & Verma
• General knowledge by Lucent
• General knowledge by Tarun Goyal
• General Knowledge Digest by TMH
• General Knowledge Manual by Muktikanta Mohanty
• General Knowledge Manual by UPSC portal Editorial Board
• Ramesh General Knowledge & Current Affairs by Rph Editorial Board
• The Pearson Concise General Knowledge Manual by Edgar Thorpe, Showick Thorpe
• The Pearson General Knowledge Manual by Edgar Thorpe, Showick Thorpe

Most of the competitive exams specify cut off marks in each section. There lies the importance of clearing the section of general awareness. Moreover it is much easy to score in the section when compared with other sections (reasoning, mathematics) in most of the competitive exams if a candidate is well prepared.