‘General Awareness’ section is an Integral part of all Banking Exams. The fact that makes it a challenge to prepare is its unlimited range of questions.
General Awareness is put in to filter out the candidates that are unaware of current national and international happenings. For bank exams, the main emphasis is on testing candidate’s awareness on topics related to banking and economy because these are the terms that candidates will have to face during his work. So a basic level of awareness is expected.
General Awareness questions don’t take too time to solve, if preparation is taken in advance because of the following reasons:
• The candidate has to only read and mark.
• This section can be attempted in less than fifteen minutes without much effort and it’s highly scoring.
• There is no calculation involved (And very minimal, if any).
• It saves precious time to go for other time-taking sections.
See below for the kind of questions asked in General Awareness section :
• What is the full form of NPA ?
• How many public sector banks are there in India ?
• What is the current base rate fixed by RBI ?
• Who is the chairman of State Bank of India ?
• How ‘account payee’ is denoted on cheque ?
General Awareness Section of Banks exams ie PO and clerk written exams include the following sections:
o Current Affairs
o General Awareness with special reference to Banking industry
o Few questions on conventional General Knowledge
Topics to cover in banking awareness :
• Questions about RBI, recent rate hikes , name of governor. Visit rbi.org.in for latest information.
• Names of important banks/financial organisations, their Chairman/MD
• Important terms in banking (like RTGS, Repo Rate, NPA, NEFT etc)
• Latest technologies used in banking (like internet banking, mobile banking, SMS banking)
• Types of Money instruments (like cheque, overdraft, demand draft, ATM/Debit card, credit card.
• Five year plans
• Recent developments in banking sectors
Some Must-read Topics to cover in general awareness are listed below:
• Names of popular people, buildings, rivers etc.
• Recent News of Importance (CAG, CWG, RTI, Telcom Policy, Lokpal etc)
• All about the current government and its functioning
• Population of India (Poverty line, census, planning commission)
Few good sources the candidate should follow to succeed in general awareness are as listed below :
• News papers are the best source of new and updated information.
• Follow some good news channels on T.V.
• Reading magazines such as Pratiyogita darpan, Competition Success etc.
• Manorama year book is a very good source of latest current affairs.
• Preparing Notes.
All the best in your endeavour !