SBI PO Descriptive Paper Guide

SBI PO Descriptive Paper: The SBI PO very clealry demands the candidates to be good at written English as well. SBI chooses to test your writing skills because as a PO you will have to design official letters, circulars, and write mails. It makes sense for SBI to test the potential candidates on such skills as well. So, here are some tips for your o follow to get better at letter writing and essay writing.

SBI PO Descriptive Paper 30 Marks Study Plan

How do I write a descriptive English Essay – Tips

Grammatical, Typos, Spelling, Punctuation Errors

You will lose valuable marks for every typing mistake you will make in the exam. Such a marking scheme elevates the importance of typing correctly. 4 typing mistakes can make you lose somewhere between 1-2 marks depending upon the exam pattern. Losing marks for academic mistakes is still acceptable but losing marks for typing mistakes would be heartbreaking. And you will be not writing the answer in a Word doc but in a dialogue box that won’t highlight any typing mistakes like Microsoft Word does. So, it’s high time you start using the old-fashioned keyboards for practicing such questions.

Titles, Bullets, & Numbering

The biggest myth about writing essays, or precis writing, is that they can be written in bullet points or in a numbering fashion. While many students think doing so enhances their piece of writing, but nothing could be farther from the truth. An essay is all about the flow of ideas. However, putting titles for each and every paragraph makes it less descriptive. The overall idea behind writing any topic should be to discuss the problems, different angles, and aspects, consequences, possible solutions, etc.

Adherence to the Word Limit

Students often miss out on this critical criterion which every examiner looks at while checking your answers. In order to avoid this mistake, you should follow the standard 10% rule. So, what’s this 10 percent rule?

If the essay question specifies the word limit to be 200 words, then you cannot go under 180-190 words, and maximum, you can stretch till 210-220 words. So, this way, you can manage your word limit issue. Moreover, marks will be deducted if you don’t follow the word limit guideline. But you are safe within the boundaries of this 10% rule.

Monotonous and Repetitive Ideas, Points

Such a thing occurs when you lack ideas and thoughts about a topic or if you don’t follow a structure for writing answers. Of course, it goes without saying that you should always keep working on your reading skills, updates about current affairs, social issues, etc. But most importantly, you should focus on a writing structure while answering such questions. One such structure is the ‘What and Why’ structure. So, what’s the ‘What and Why’ structure?

While writing on any topic, you should ask these questions.

What are the problems?

What are the implications?

What are the solutions?

Why is this happening?

What can be the consequences in the coming future?

So, these points will give you a writing structure that will easily make your answer expressive and non-monotonous.

Quotations vs Proverbs

Proverbs work better than individual quotations as they will not make the reader or the examiner biased. Proverbs are general or famous sayings, but quotations are based on popular personalities. Let’s say you mentioned a quote once given by Dr. Manmohan Singh in your answer, but what if the examiner doesn’t agree or like that person? However, if you would have mentioned a general proverb such as “A cat has nine lives”, it doesn’t represent any person or authority, making it a generalized saying.