IMPROVING YOUR COMMUNICATION SKILLS

Written By Girish Seshamani

As a trainer for CAT\MAT and other competitive exams over the last ten years, I find lot of intelligent students not being able to crack the Group Discussion and Interview. The fear of the unknown is so high, that these set of students, see themselves as failures.

In our country, English is the second language. Apart from metropolitan cities, which have a number of convent schools, all other students stand at a huge disadvantage, since they are not exposed to the English Language. In all these states, even though the English Language is part of the curriculum, the English Language is taught in their mother tongue. The teachers themselves are not trained properly and they do not have the ability to make the English Language interesting. Moreover the interaction between students also happens in their mother tongue, with the net result being a rude shock, when they get exposed to the outside world.

When I interacted with this category of students at length their concerns were:

If we try to converse in English with our teachers, they reply in our mother tongue

English is not required for me because I am joining the family business

Our friends make fun of us or treat us as social outcasts, if we try to converse in English

Our parents are not educated and our siblings are also sailing in the same boat

Our teachers discourage the use of English

We know only a few words

We do not know how to construct a sentence and pronounce the word, so we will end up making fools of ourselves

Emotionally sensitive

Inability to speak in front of a small group or public speaking

Thinking in one’s mother tongue and translating into English

After listening to their concerns, I just asked them one question, How did you pick up your mother tongue? The answer was prompt. We learnt to speak our mother tongue by listening to our parents speak. My next question was, Did your parents teach you grammar? The answer was No

I then went on to tell them, the English Language also needs to be learnt, the same way.

I worked out a plan of action which I am listing below:

Be passionate about the English Language

Make it a point to watch News Channels, Animal Planet or National Geographic. Close your eyes and focus on the words. Likewise, if you share a passion for a particular game, as in, cricket or football, listen to the commentary

In the initial phase do not bother about your grammatical accuracy, fluency or vocabulary. Your focus should be to reach a level, where you can boldly communicate in the English Language, with whatever vocabulary you have

Identify one person in your locality who speaks the English Language fluently. Have a serious discussion with this person, and tell him that you want to improve your language, and you are prepared to stretch the limit. Ask him to correct your mistakes. Fix up a time convenient to him and interact with him for anywhere between 10 – 15 minutes daily. This conversation can be in person or on phone. Ask him to correct your mistakes and make it a point, not to repeat the same mistake again.

Avail of every opportunity that you get to speak. Never bother about the reaction of the audience. There are bound to be people in the audience who will smile sarcastically or may laugh at you, while you are delivering your speech. Let me tell you that these people are failures. They have not achieved anything in their life, and are filled with envy. Make yourself mentally so tough, that nothing should pull you down, and destroy your confidence

Do not compare yourself with anyone. You are unique

Read any magazine which is related to your area of interest. If you want to go in for fiction, there is nothing to beat, James Hadley Chase. You will not put the book down, till you have finished, reading the book fully. The language used is also simple.

Always think in English. If you think in your mother tongue, and translate into English, the structure will go horribly wrong. Let us take a sentence; Rita is beautiful, which is the right structure. Assuming that your mother tongue is Hindi, the translation will be, Rita khoobsurat hai, which when translated to English becomes, Rita beautiful is. Always remember the basic structure of the English Language, which is, Subject + Verb + Object

Practice Auto Suggestion. Human beings are blessed with two minds, conscious mind and the subconscious mind. When we go to sleep in the night, the subconscious mind comes on top and the conscious mind goes down. Auto suggestion means feeding your subconscious mind with positive thoughts. In this case, let us assume that you have to deliver a speech after one week. Everyday before going to sleep, imagine that you are one of the best speakers in the world. People admire you and they have come in huge numbers to listen to you. See yourself talking confidently, and the audience listening to you, with full attention. After your speech gets over, the entire crowds’ gets up from their seats and give you a standing applause. Do this everyday without fail, and more importantly, believe in the power of the subconscious mind. Visualize this whole scene again and again. The great tennis player, Andre Agassi, is a master of the subconscious mind. When you get up in the morning, the conscious mind comes on top, and the subconscious mind goes down. The job of the conscious mind, is purely to implement the commands, given to it, by the subconscious mind. You can rewrite your whole destiny, if you tap the power of your subconscious mind

Before I wind up, I would like to quote Martin Luther King, who said, “The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenges and controversies”

HAPPY SPEAKING

The Right Way to Start Preparing for CAT

People often go to soothsayers and astrologers to find the most opportune time to embark upon a project of importance. Whether or not that helps is a matter of personal belief. We, however, have some timely advice for those preparing for CAT this year. Most serious CAT aspirants will give anything to find out the perfect moment to start preparing for the exam. We spoke to Vaishnu Dass, Quant faculty at TCY and sought his expert views.

Vaishnu is an authority on Quant preparation and gives coaching for CAT, GRE & GMAT. Faculty at TCY, he has been coaching aspirants for these exams for the last 14 years.

Is there a 'magic number' of hours of coaching that one should get while preparing for Quant part of CAT?

There is no 'magic number' of hours as such. Nevertheless, there are an optimum number of hours of classroom lectures that are required. From my experience of over 14 years, I feel that at least 84 hours must be allocated for Quant in order to excel in it.

How do you divide these hours? How many hours a day? How many days a week?
I would divide CAT test prep into three distinct categories. Rush Hour, Optimum and Ideal. Let's talk about 'Rush Hour' first.

Rush Hour: is when a candidate sincerely starts his CAT prep after his final year exam. With just about six months to go for the CAT, the entire preparation schedule has to be completed in a relatively short time. For instance, at TCY, classes are scheduled six days a week and here, the onus is on the student to keep up with the hectic pace.

The student has to understand that a very self-disciplined effort in self-study will be required on his part to make it to the top.

Optimum: is when a student is in his final year and starts preparing in January/ February of his graduation year. With around 9-10 months to go, the pace of instruction is brisk but not as breathless as 'Rush Hour'. For Instance, at TCY, classes are scheduled three days a week and a student gets optimum time to revise what is being taught in the classroom. A break of one day between classes allows students the luxury of self studying at the pace most suited to their temperament.

Even an average student who studies sincerely and consistently has every chance of making it to the B- School list.

Ideal: This is when a student enters the penultimate year of his graduation degree course. A good faculty gets the time to teach students to crawl before making them walk and run hard! Basics are covered in depth and preparation starts at the very grassroot level. At TCY, we schedule classes only twice a week over the weekend initially.

The first few months are spent entirely in concept building. It can be compared to being able to dig the foundations oneself before laying them and finally constructing upon them. By the time a student reaches the final year of his degree course, his foundation is so strong that he is more than halfway ready to take on the CAT. The best part about this is that it is of longer duration and more exhaustive than Optimum, but generally costs less.

What preparation strategy would you suggest for each of the three distinct categories you just mentioned?

In Rush Hour, I would recommend the student to take a Diagnostic Test first. A diagnostic test is a mock test especially made to gauge an aspirant's grasp of concepts. Once the strengths and weaknesses are clear to a student, it is recommended that a student start working on his weak areas first as they are the ones that offer maximum chance of improvement. Areas of strength can be worked upon later in the day. At TCY, we put such students on extensive online testing with a strong focus on performance analysis with the help of TCY Analytics. With TCY Analytics, a student is able to benchmark his performance of each sub-section, section and subject against all his previous attempts. This helps him in analyzing his progress with each test. Later on, the aspirant can start benchmarking his attempt against lacs of other aspirants on our website, www.TCYonline.com.

The success in 'Optimum' category rests majorly on the optimum trade-off between self study and disciplined prep. Self study is any day the best test prep strategy. However, disciplined prep calls for following a light but consistent weekly schedule. The CAT programme on TCYonline works on lecture by lecture schedule for each test section. This helps the candidate decide what fraction of the total available time for CAT prep he should invest in a particular month.

Additionally, joining a classroom programme would add to your disciplined effort.

The ideal prep calls for, obviously, the ideal way. For a candidate, this means understanding what skills the exam tests and taking a few sample tests in each area to know his 'Best' and 'Worst' areas. A good faculty will help the student by chalking out a plan till December to develop the lower and middle level skills required. For instance, working on one's vocabulary, reading regularly on topics that come in the exams, improving one's reasoning ability and re-visiting the Class VIII, IX and X math concepts of 2-3 major boards viz. CBSE, ICSE and Maharashtra [ Images ] SSC can be very useful. One can find a lot of this basic stuff on TCYonline and can generate customized tests on any topic to move up the learning curve skill by skill.

What advice would you give to CAT aspirants?

First, the student has to be very clear 'if' he wants to go for MBA. To explain, let us take a hypothetical situation. A BBA student is in his second year and he has consistently been getting good percentage so far. If he is extremely sure that he will not take up a job straight after graduating, he can afford to take his foot off the pedal a little bit and start preparing for CAT. As long as his overall percentage remains above 50%, he can appear for CAT. A high CAT score will see him secure a call from the best B- Schools in the country.

On the other hand, even if he gets overall 70% in BBA, he can't secure a call from a good business school with a low CAT score. I again say, vision is very important. If MBA is not of paramount importance, focus fully on your current academic pursuit. If MBA is your ultimate goal, learn to keep your focus and prioritise accordingly.
Visit the Link given below and get complete study material.
CAT 2010
CAT Preparation
CAT 2010 Verbal Ability
CAT 2010 Data Interpretation
CAT 2010 Quantitative Ability
CAT 2010 Reasoning
MBA Business GK Questions
MBA CAT Foundation

CAT 2010 Preparation

TCYonline.com has launched CAT Test Prep modules for online test preparation. The first of these modules is totally free for CAT aspirants and the remaining modules are very affordably priced. In an age when CAT Test prep is a huge money making business, such offers can really help students who are deserving but can't afford high coaching fees.

Request you to please give space in your esteemed newspaper and help students make use of the free and other low cost test prep modules. The complete press release follows below.

TCYonline.com offers Free Online CAT Test Prep. CAT 2010 is perhaps less than six months away and the serious aspirants are already settled into preparation mode. Classroom coaching, Mock Tests and self study are the mantras for success. Regular coaching institutes are making a killing by playing on the insecurities of students regarding CAT selection and promoting their expensive online tests. In this scenario, an irresistible offer from TCYonline.com has come like a breath of fresh air for CAT-2010 aspirants. TCYonline.com has launched four online modules for CAT-2010 preparation. The pricing of these modules has been kept in such a manner that even the student who cannot spend money also walks away with a lot.

The first CAT-2010 preparation module, which is named CAT Free, contains 200 plus free online tests for the CAT-2010 aspirant. All the tests are based on actual CAT pattern and the students can see their results instantly.

The second module, called CAT Basic comes at a very low price of Rs.600 only contains 60 plus text based lessons and also gives the aspirant the right to use TCY Analytics Engine, a proprietary TCY technology. TCY Analytics Engine has a database of over 15 million analytics, collected over the last three years. Every time a student attempts a test, he/she not only gets his comparative ranking and percentile with tens of thousands of aspirants of the same test, but also gets statistics like comparative time taken on each question, sub-section, section etc. Attempt pattern, correctness of answers, absolute and comparative time taken, absolute percentages, nationwide percentiles and expert recommendation come as a part of the TCY Analytics Package.

The third module, aptly named CAT Advantage, comes at the cost of Rs.1000 only and contains 250 plus tests, 60 plus text based lessons and Audio lectures apart from the right to use TCY Analytics to track one’s progress. The premium module, CAT Premium, which costs just Rs.1950, offers Specialized Modules apart from all the features of the CAT Advantage; module. Students can buy these courses through online payment with credit card, net banking, debit card or even offline bank deposit method.
http://www.tcyonline.com/exam-preparation

Students, share your GDPI experiences with the nation

TCYonline.com, India’s No. 1 test prep website has come out with a platform for students to share their interview experiences with other readers. All current and previous UPSC, MBA, MCA, NDA and NTSE (finals) candidates can share their G.D.P.I. and interview experiences with nearly one million users of TCYonline.com. Even students who have appeared for Student Visa interviews can upload their experiences on TCYonline.com. Apart from interview experience, achievers can also share their preparation strategies and success mantra with other students on the portal. Students studying abroad after clearing their GRE and GMAT exams can also share their stories as also their experiences of settling down in a new culture.
All that a contributor has to do is mail the stories to manav.sarmal@tcyonline.com or alternatively they can log on to www.TCYonline.com and self submit their experiences.
TCYonline.com, India’s number one test prep platform has nearly one million enrolled students from over 1500 cities and towns across the nation. The website has over 15000 free tests from over 50 exam categories and boasts of a databank of nearly 5 lac questions.

My CAT Preparation Strategy

Written By Tilak Yagnik
I passed CAT in 2008 and got admitted at school of petroleum management. Well if i talk about my preparation of CAT it was not too voracious or rigorous, but it was surely a smart work. I was in third year of my engineering when I started off with the preparation at my coaching classes. My initial attempt was to get clear in concepts and solve the lower difficulty problems and questions which are generally asked in state entrance. What i feel is that daily four hours of practicing continuously for four months is enough to crack CAT provided you divide your time equally in all segment and not the one you are comfortable with. My practice pattern was to solve the papers I use to get from coaching classes “during and after the exam”. Also CAT is hell lot of dependent on the approach you solve your papers. Usually people decide to complete the section they are comfortable with first and then move further but what I feel is one should be flexible and move across sections in the paper. Do not try to complete one section at one go. We get messed up when the segment we first target turns out difficult and spoils our confidence. And it is very difficult to maintain same amount of confidence and concentration through out the paper. I wish all the aspirants all the very best.

ICET 2010 MCA Answer Keys

Solution Keys for ICET-2010

Integrated Common Entrance Test- 2010, popularly known as ICET 2010, will be held across the nation on the 27th of May. More Than two lac aspirants will be participating in the prestigious test that decides admission to MBA and MCA programs for all universities in Andhra Pradesh and their affiliate colleges. The test is conducted by Andhra University, Visakhapatnam on behalf of Andhra Pradesh State Council for Higher Education, Hyderabad. After the test, the most important sought after information will be the ICET 2010 answer keys. Students will want to know how well they did and ICET 2010 solution keys will be one of the most searched key phrase on the net.

Subject experts at www.TCYonline.com, India’s largest online test prep platform, will be solving the test paper and hosting the ICET 2010 solution keys on the website. Students wanting to check ICET answers can find them on http://www.tcyonline.com/exam-analysis/icet-2010-solutions latest by 6 p.m. of the same day as the test.

Students from across the nation can also participate in ‘ICET Questions Discussion’ on the website. They can also leave their queries on the website and the experts at TCY will revert back with the answers within a short time. Candidates will also be able to input their expected scoring range and TCY Analytics will also compute the inputs to give a cross section of expected scores.

Unlimited free ICET 2010 Mock Tests are also available in the tests section on www.TCYonline.com. Aspirants can do last minute revision and hone their skills for the upcoming test. They can also target self improvement by using TCY Analytics to analyze their attempt pattern, time taken on each question, sub topic and topic wise analysis of strengths and weaknesses.

UPSC Prelims 2010 General Studies Answer Keys

Solution Keys for UPSC Preliminaries-2010

UPSC Preliminary Exam will be held across the nation on Sunday, the 23rd of May. Lacs of aspirants will be participating in the prestigious test. After the test, the most important sought after information will be the UPSC 2010 answer keys. Students will want to know how well they did and UPSC 2010 solution keys will be the most searched key phrase on the net.

Subject experts at www.TCYonline.com, India’s largest online test prep platform, will be solving the General Studies test paper and hosting the UPSC 2010 General Studies> solution keys on the website. Students wanting to check UPSC Preliminary General Studies answers can find them on http://www.tcyonline.com/exam-analysis/upsc-prelims-2010-solutions after 6 p.m. of the same day as the test.

Students from across the nation can also participate in ‘UPSC Questions Discussion’ on the website. They can also leave their queries on the website and the experts at TCY will revert back with the answers within a short time.

Civil Services Preliminary Examinations (Objective Type) are for the selection of candidates for Main Examination. This IAS Preliminary Examination is meant to serve as a screening test only; the marks obtained in the Civil Services Preliminary Examination by the candidates who are declared qualified for admission to the Civil Services Main Examination will not be counted for determining their final order of merit.