Essay, Precis & Reading Comprehension — RBI's Phase 2 English Paper — Practice

Question 1

How many marks does the Essay carry in RBI's English Writing Skills paper?

Accepted Answer

40 marks.

Question 2

Is RBI's Phase 2 English Writing Skills paper objective, descriptive, or a mix?

Accepted Answer

Wholly descriptive — no objective component.

Question 3

Approximately how long should the essay be?

Accepted Answer

Approximately 600 words.

Question 4

Given the 40/30/30 marks split across Essay/Precis/RC in a 90-minute paper, what is a proportional time allocation?

Accepted Answer

Approximately 40 minutes for the essay, 25 minutes for the precis, and 25 minutes for reading comprehension.

Question 5

What does 'cite a number and a committee' mean as essay-writing guidance for this paper?

Accepted Answer

It means using concrete, checkable references — a real data point, named policy, or specific institution/committee — rather than making the same argument in purely abstract, ungrounded language.

Question 6

Distinguish an author's 'argument' from the 'evidence' supporting it in a comprehension passage.

Accepted Answer

The argument is the actual claim or position the passage makes; the evidence is the supporting data, example or reasoning offered for that claim. Treating evidence as if it were the main argument is a common source of comprehension errors.

Question 7

Explain why an essay on 'inflation targeting and its critics' that only describes the framework's history would score poorly, and what it should do instead.

Accepted Answer

It would score poorly because it fails to engage the topic's actual policy trade-off — credibility and anchored inflation expectations versus reduced flexibility to respond to a genuine economic shock. The essay should state this trade-off explicitly and argue a considered position on it, since that is precisely the substantive debate the topic is testing awareness of, not just historical description.

Question 8

Why does RBI's precis task demand a sharper 'load-bearing sentence' identification skill than a general banking-exam precis?

Accepted Answer

RBI's source passages are drawn from denser, more argument-heavy economic and policy writing than a general-interest passage used in other banking exams, so distinguishing the passage's genuinely load-bearing argument sentences from its illustrative examples and supporting detail is a harder, more consequential first step before compression can even begin.

Practice — Essay, Precis & Reading Comprehension — RBI's Phase 2 English Paper

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