How to Prepare for NIACL AO English Section?

The New India Assurance Company Limited has released a notification regarding the vacancies for the post of AO. Dates for the preliminary exam have also been released.  So, hardly 25 days are left. In such a short period, you need to prepare each section with precision. For this, you need to have a good strategy for each section. English is considered the easiest of all the sections, and because of this, many times students underestimate which ultimately pays a lot during the examination. To help you prepare for the English section, we have curated a strategy that will help you ace the competition.  

NIACL Exam Pattern: Weightage of English section

In NIACL Exam, the English section consists of 30 questions, which are of 30 marks. There is a sectional time limit of 20 minutes along with a negative marking of ¼th mark for each incorrect answer. In the analysis of previous year’s papers of the NIACL AO Exam done by our experts, we observed that an average student attempts 22-24 questions, and those who make up to the mains stage attempt 25-28 questions. So you can consider targeting 25-28 questions to be solved in the examination, in order to get good scores. 

Most Important Topics for English Section

Here is a list of topics given in the table below that a candidate should prepare for the NIACL AO exam. Basically, English is divided into three sections: Reading comprehension, Vocabulary, and Grammar. In the table given below, we have mentioned topics according to these three sections. 

Reading Comprehension	Vocabulary	Grammar
RCs based on Economics, Finance, and Banking, health, technology, etc.	Word Usage	Tenses Prepositions Noun Pronoun Verb / Modal Adverb Articles Conjunctions Voice Narration Question Tags
Story-Based Passages	Idioms and Phrases	Conditional Sentences
	Antonyms and Synonyms	Phrasal Verbs
		Active and Passive
		Narration (Direct/Indirect Speech)
		Parallelism

Step-by-Step Strategy to Prepare English Section for NIACL AO

Read The Hindu Editorial/Any Newspaper Daily

Read the editorial section of The Hindu Newspaper daily or any other newspaper of your choice. They are written the same way as reading comprehension is asked in the exam. In prelims, you can expect moderate-level English passages. So it will help you a lot by reading it daily and practicing the questions; you will become proficient, and during the examination, you will be able to solve it in less time, which will also help you with inference-based questions. 

Master Vocabulary through Repetition of Root Words

One of the most important things to do for mastering vocabulary is to learn root words and repeat them daily while reading something, not necessarily the editorial, anything you read, just locate the words wherever you see them. 

Example of root words- Root Word – Mal – a Latin word, Meaning – bad or evil. 

English words having the ‘mal’ root word –

• Malignment – defame something badly
• Malice – evil intention

Another important thing that comes under vocabulary is idioms and phrases, and one of the best ways to learn them is by making categories based on expression, colour, etc. 

Example – idioms based on action and behaviour 

accidentally on purpose(idiom and phrases)

If you do something intentionally, but pretend it was an accident, you do it accidentally on purpose.
“I accidentally-on-purpose erased his email address, so I couldn’t contact him again.”

add fuel to the flames(idiom and phrases)

If you add fuel to the flames, you do or say something that makes a difficult or unpleasant situation even worse.
“He forgot their wedding anniversary, and his apologies only added fuel to the flames.

Make a Daily ritual of practicing Reading Comprehension

Again, there is no shortcut other than rigorous practice to become a master in reading comprehension. Daily practice of reading is necessary to make yourself exam-ready. What to read and what not to read is the key to mastering the RCs. While solving RCs, you can apply various strategies and see what suits you well. For example, reading questions on the first basis and then reading the passage, or reading the passage first and then answering the questions.

Do practice good-level questions by giving a mock test

Master any technique, you require that level of questions, and to practice them regularly is another important factor for the same. So make sure you are practicing a good level of questions regularly. To practice questions, you can sign up for our mock test series, where we provide exam-level questions along with detailed analysis and solutions.

Conclusion

In this blog, we have discussed in detail about the English section strategy of NIACL AO. To practice questions, you can take our mock test series and also take our banking and insurance exam courses to make yourself exam-ready. The link is given below. 

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