 Hi friends, welcome to my channel, I am Arpita Karwa and in this video I will be talking to you about a very unconventional optional for UPSC exam. Many students usually do not opt for this optional but this one optional has been producing several all India rankers every year and the optional I am going to talk about is English Literature. So in this video I will break your myths that makes you think that English Literature is not a scoring subject for UPSC optional. I am going to also ensure that by the end of this video all your myths will be broken and you will have a changed viewpoint. In this video I will acquaint you with the syllabus as we will talk about a 4 step process to prepare for UPSC English Optional. So make sure you watch this video till the end. Also if you are new to this channel then please hit the subscribe button and press the bell icon so that you never miss an update. We are proud to share that we are India's largest growing YouTube channel in the field of UTCnet and UPSC English Optional exam preparation right now having the maximum number of subscribers. Guys it is true that many people believe that English Literature is an unconventional, difficult and less scoring optional. However this isn't the fact. This optional would make sense for specific people and not for every UPSC aspirant. Now you must be confused as to what do I mean by specific people. Let me clarify that for you. This optional can help you as the UPSC exam if you are someone who has a keen interest in English Literature and if you are someone who finds it interesting to read poetry, novels, plays then this optional is for you. In fact to ace your UPSC optional you will need to devote about 500 hours to this optional. But you need to keep in mind that you cannot devote 500 hours to any optional which you dislike. So English Literature as an optional should only be chosen only and only be chosen if you are someone who genuinely likes English. Now through this video I will give you 4 steps to help you begin with your English Optional Preparation for UPSC. My aim would be to give you a complete blueprint using which you will be able to score really high marks in your UPSC exam. So let us begin with step number 1 which is to know your syllabus. Knowing the syllabus is the fundamental requirement to clear any exam. So after this video please visit the UPSC website and download the syllabus of English Literature optional. Or you can visit my website alpithakarva.com and get the detailed syllabus of UPSC English Optional. Now another important thing that you must be aware of is that the syllabus is divided into 2 papers, paper 1 and paper 2. But in respect of which paper you are preparing you need to complete the entire syllabus. So on our website you will find the syllabus is arranged in a chronological manner where we have clubbed both the papers paper 1 and paper 2. Reading English Literature in chronological order will help you to get a better sense of the syllabus. Coming to the English Literature optional syllabus you have about 15 novels, 5 plays and about 60 poems to study. In addition to these works it is necessary that you have a basic understanding of the history of English Literature. You also need a good grasp over basic terminology such as modernism, stream of consciousness, absurd drama, psychoanalytical criticism. You won't find these basic concepts mentioned anywhere in your syllabus but it is important to know and understand them so that you can use them in the answers and make them stand apart. Now let us move on to step number 2 which is analyzing the previous year papers. The syllabus only tells us which topics to read but does not shed light on what all to read in the topic. Going through the past year papers you will find the kind of questions being asked from each text and that will help you form a perspective through which you can deal with every text. You will also find that there are several repetitive questions which are asked every year with a slight modification of the language. So I would suggest you simply look up the previous year papers, sort and club the questions from a particular topic together and then study that topic. Or instead to save your time and effort you can directly go to our website arpithakarva.com. In the past year papers section you will find all the past year papers of UPSC English Optional. You can go and check out those papers in detail and streamline your preparation. If you are wondering why am I emphasizing so much on analyzing past year question papers then let me tell you a simple reason by giving an example. For example, you are reading the play Adults House which is by Henrik Ibsen and after reading the entire play you look at the past year paper and find that a question has been asked. What's the question? How does Ibsen externalize inner problems by using effective symbols in Adults House? Now after glancing at this question you will realize that while studying Adults House you haven't jot down any points or mentioned any incidences that substantiate your answer. But since you didn't look at the past year papers before studying and making notes of the text you might have to redo the entire exercise. Hence it is always advisable to run through the past year papers before you start making notes. Now with this we come on to the third step which is reading and making notes. It is the most crucial and the most time taking process. Now what is this all about? Before starting this topic I would want to give you a very important disclaimer. What I am about to say may not be agreed upon by many teachers and many aspirants but I am sharing this based on UPSC topper's experience and also based on my own experience. So please listen to what I have to say in a calm and composed manner and try to test it and implement it. The topic I am referring to is how to read the text and make notes. The traditional approach which you can find across various YouTube videos suggest that you can study each and every work in detail rather than its summary. So they would want you to study the entire text but I would like to take a completely different approach. I would always suggest students to invest time in reading the summary and not reading the original text. I have some very scientific facts to back up my point and that is why I am saying this with so much confidence. The first one is that reading the text is a very time consuming process. In the UPSC preparation your majority of time is mainly devoted to various other subjects like history, polity, economics, current affairs. Optional is just one thing that you have to cover in a year long journey. So obviously you can't take an approach that is too time consuming. There lies a huge gap in reading a 300 page novel and studying a 20 page summary of the same novel. Hence I would suggest you to not go to the original text. Secondly along with being a time consuming process reading original text is also futile exercise. No matter how well you read the original text you won't be able to remember and recall every page of it 10 days down the line. Even right now if I give you a line from a work that you've read, suppose Hamlet, you won't be able to tell which character set this line in which act of the play. Why? Because you cannot feed everything to the human brain. You have to rely on revisions but even after being a time consuming process there is hardly any chance that you would be able to recall from the main text which makes this entire approach very very futile. And the most important thing is that even after studying the text there would be questions in the paper you won't be able to answer beautifully. For example, take a question from King Lear as to discuss the ways in which King Lear explores the theme of power. Would you be able to pen down a structured and beautiful answer for this question in just 250 words after studying the entire King Lear's text? In majority cases students would write down an answer which won't be structured because they would be writing from tits and bits that they would recall from the text in a very randomized fashion. And this is never going to fetch you any marks. So you might be able to understand why am I emphasizing so much on summaries rather than the text. But there is also a right way to read these summaries. Now let me tell you the correct way to read the summaries. So firstly you need to read the detailed summary of every work be it a play, poem or a novel. For this we have a separate online course specifically designed for UPS English optional students wherein we use animations to help you understand every text in detail. We even provide every critical detail related to the works along with a PDF on how to write answers on all these topics. With the sample answers in the PDF you can learn the right method to write these answers. So if you are not enrolled in our online course but are preparing using your own sources then along with detailed summaries you also need to read the age in which the work was written. Important quotations, themes, symbols, motives, references and critical comments. All these topics must form a part of your answer. That means you must make detailed notes on these topics. This can be a very very tiresome process and that is why we recommend you to join our online course where we provide you with the topic-wise video lectures with rich animations covering all the topics in a step-by-step manner in this work even when you have not done any previous preparation. So for example there is a question that how does George Elliot portray the relationship of siblings in Mill on the Floss? To write the answer of such a question only a detailed summary of Mill on the Floss won't work. You have to explore the character of Tom in Maggie Deliver and take instances from there. Then there are a lot of symbols and motives which actually reflect and comment on the brother-sister relationship. You need to use those motives in drafting your answer. And that is how you will make proper answer. Finally, let's discuss where we should make the notes from. Guys, I've always been a topper both in my graduation and my post-graduation. I've also cleared UGC Night English literature exam in the first attempt which is said to be one of the toughest exam in the field of English literature. But I'm not here boasting about my achievements. What I want to highlight is that whenever I was preparing for any exam there were plenty of sources that I was referring to and the same sources I recommend you to refer for your UPSC English optional preparation. One of the sources are the literary websites available online like LitCharts, BookRanks, GradeSaver, Core Zero. You can purchase the subscription of all these websites, download their detailed PDFs and study them thoroughly. Do remember that a short synopsis of the works won't work. You have to study the detailed summary of all the prescribed texts. You can also go ahead and watch a movie on that particular text. A movie will help you understand the working greater depths and will definitely leave a longer imprint on your mind. So whenever you watch a movie it is actually going to stay in your mind even on the day of the exam. The issue with the movies is that it doesn't provide you all important facts that are there in the book. A good alternative to these movies are our online video course where you will get animated videos for every topic. A crucial benefit of our animated videos is that every character in each detail of the plot gets imprinted in your mind and becomes very easy for you to remember. The link of our website and all our courses are given in the description box below. You can check out the course details from our website and even watch free demo lectures and attempts, free demo mock tests before you decide to enroll in the course. So this was all about step number three. Now we finally move on to the most crucial step which is step number four, practice answer writing. Now a lot of people ask you how to write an appropriate answer. Since the answer writing portion is a very detailed and crucial topic I would like to address it in another video. So if you are looking for a video wherein I can explain you how to write answers for UPS English optional please put that in the comment section below and I would love to work on that video. However, I would still give some tips related to answer writing in this video. So whenever you practice answer writing the number one thing that you should always remember is to time yourself. Your answer should be crisp and clear. You should be clear in your head to devote not more than 7 minutes for a 10 marker and not more than 14 minutes for a 20 marker answer. Another important tip involved with answer writing is to always remember that writing extra material will not give you extra marks. An examiner cannot give you 20 marks out of 10 even if you have taken your sweet time to write down the best answer of the universe for a 10 marker question. So please remember that ultimately it is a time-based test. Now another important thing that you should remember when it comes to answer writing is to have some basic paragraphs handy on each topic that can be used to answer any question that is asked on a particular topic. So in every answer irrespective of what they are asking in the question you have to talk a little bit about the author of the work the age in which the work was written you have to include an introduction and a conclusion you have to include some important quotations as well as some critical comments which was spoken about that particular work or about that particular author. Since you will be writing all these parts in your answer it somewhere comfortably forms 60% of your answer. This 60% answer is going to be almost same for any question asked on a particular work. It is only 40% answer which you have to change based on what the question is asking. Hence while practicing answer writing do make it a point to keep the 60% of your answer static in short you should mug up this 60% portion and pour it in your answer sheet as it is on the day of the exam. This will save a lot of your time and help you by giving some more time to beautifully craft the remaining 40% of the answer. So in that I come to the end of this particular video I hope that I was able to give you a blueprint that will assist you in your UPSC English optional preparation. If you found this video helpful then please like this video by giving it a big fan thumbs up and also share it with other fellow aspirants who are struggling with similar kind of questions. I am quite eager to know how you felt about this video. Did you like it? Not like it? Did you find it helpful? Please share your views in the comments below. Also if you have any questions or doubts or if you want me to make a video on any other topic then feel free to put that in the comments section. Every morning I fondly read every comments that you guys put in the comments section. So that's it from my side for this video lecture. I'll meet you very soon in the next video lecture till the time we meet next. Happy learning, keep loving literature and stay tuned to arpitakarva.com