 My friends, my name is Arpata Karwa and welcome to my channel. I'm making this video specifically for students who are preparing for UGC net English literature. Students who prepare for this particular exam, I'm pretty sure would go through the past year papers and when they go through past year papers, they actually find certain questions that are based on chronology. So you would find questions like the one displayed on the screen where there is a set of works and you have to tell which is the correct order of publication. Now when you look at these questions, you end up wondering that are you supposed to learn 4-5,000 works publication dates? There are more than 4,000 important works in English literature and if you have to solve questions like these, you should be able to learn the dates of these works and at times they also ask questions based on the chronology of authors. Now those questions make you wonder that are you supposed to learn the birth and the death date of all these important and great writers and if that is the case, it is going to be a herculean dusk because it is not easy to remember and mug up these dates and keep them in your head. So I am going to burst this myth of all those who think that they can only clear a net exam if they know the dates of all the important works and the birth and the death dates of writers. I am going to instead tell you a very simple strategy using which you can get these questions right. So are you ready? Let's get started. Before I talk about my super technique that can help you get the chronology based questions right, let me tell you what is the issue behind learning and mugging up these dates. So if you are trying to achieve this goal of mugging up dates of 5,000 works, let me tell you where you are going wrong. So in literature if you look at the most important works, there are more than 3,000 works which are very important and they can ask the publication date of any of these 3,000 writers in the chronology based questions. So the problem is that it is practically impossible for anybody to get all these right in your head because what happens is that you might remember them for a day but tomorrow when you look at the works again, you will get confused and all the publication dates are going to jumble up in your head. Let me give you a simple example. So there are these 4 prominent works which were published in 1920s displayed on screen. Now you have the publication date displayed alongside. Just look at this table for a while and now tomorrow when you sit down to study, just try to recall these 4 works and the publication date and just cross check by watching this video again and see if you still remember the publication date till tomorrow correctly because mostly what would happen is that you will remember the 4 works but the publication dates are going to get swapped. So they all will get jumbled up in your head and you will end up making mistakes. Another important issue that you might see with this mugging up technique is that it is a very tedious and time taking process and if you do the cost benefit analysis that how many hours you are putting to learn these dates and how many questions are coming on the day of the exam, you will find that this is not the right way because you might have to spend around 50 to 60 hours to learn these dates and remember them well but the questions that are asked generally in UGC net exam from these chronology is not more than 2 or 3. So for those 6, 8 marks you are putting an effort of 50 hours that's not justifiable at all. If you would have put this much hours in understanding literary theory and remembering the works of these literary theorists you would have got 15 questions right. Benefit analysis is not right in this particular case and that is the reason why I tell all my students who are enrolled in my online course every time that please don't try to mug up the birth and the death dates of writers and the publication date of the famous works. Now that we know why the mugging up technique doesn't work in this case let us look at a new approach. So what I generally tell my students to do is that when they enroll in my online course for UGC net English they get a module wise syllabus. So this list of module wise writers are available free of cost on my website arpathakarva.com you can go and check out the full syllabus and find this list free of cost. Now when you look at the module wise syllabus you will find that all these modules have different chapters and every chapter has got lessons. So let us take an example of British literature. British literature is module one of my online course. Now in module one you have got chapters which are arranged chronologically. So all the ages of English literature forms one chapter each. So for example we begin from old English literature or Anglo-Saxon literature all the way down to the post-modern literature and all these chapters are arranged chronologically and within each chapter you have the writers who were writing during that particular era and all those writers are also arranged chronologically as per the birth date. So for example if you look at romantic literature which is a chapter in British literature module you will find that you have got a list of writers then just after romantic literature you have got Victorian literature then you have modern then you have post-modern. So everything is arranged chronologically. I ask my students to make notes in this order as well. So when they listen to my lectures they are asked to make notes in the similar fashion. Now within each writer when you listen to my lecture on a writer you will find that I am talking about the works of that writer in the chronological order. For example if I am talking about Charles Dickens so all the novels of Charles Dickens are told in the lecture one by one as per the chronology. So the novels that he wrote first are going to be spoken first in the lecture and then gradually we move on to the novels that he wrote in the last days of his life. So that is the chronology that we follow. Now if you have a pictographic memory which 90% students have the benefit of this technique is that when you are revising your notes you will find that on top of a particular page you have Charles Dickens biography written then you have the first work then towards the bottom of the page you have second work then on the right hand side of the page you have the third work then fourth work and then fifth work and this is how you are going to learn the writers and when you are going to sit on the day of the exam to attempt these questions you will actually have the picture of these notes in your head. So you will know that okay so here I saw that we were talking about Pickwick papers and on the left hand side there was Oliver Twist and just below Oliver Twist there was Hard Times so okay so Oliver Twist was written before Hard Times. This is how you will remember the page of your notes if you have revised them thoroughly because in the day of in the exam paper generally there are two types of chronology questions. One question type is when they are going to take four writers from four different eras and give you four books of these writers for example they give you a play by Shakespeare then they give you a novel by Charles Dickens then they give you a novel by Virginia Wolf and they give you a novel by a romantic writer for example Jane Austen so Pride and Prejudice. So they give you novels and dramas from four different era now if you have gone through my online course in that order you will find out that okay the first is from Elizabethan page to that is going to come first then is from the romantic then is from the Victorian and then is from the modern so you know the timeline even if you have not remembered the publication date. Now the second type of questions that will come in the paper is when they give you four works of the same writer okay for example they give you four novels by Jane Austen and they tell you to arrange them chronologically. Now if you have written notes in that particular fashion as displayed on screen you will find out that okay the first section of the notes talks about the first work then the second work then the third work then the fourth work so if you remember the picture of that notebook in front of your eyes on the day of the exam you will easily be able to tell that okay this was the first work this the second work this was the third and this was the fourth work so you will arrange them chronologically even when you don't know the publication date of a single work. Now this is a technique where you don't have to put any extra effort you are learning the works of Jane Austen earlier also and even when you are using this technique you are learning the works of Jane Austen the only difference is that when you are making notes you are making it in the similar fashion rather than talking about pride and prejudice first and you know sense and sensibility later you actually make notes in the fashion where the first work of Jane Austen is noted first and then the second work of Jane Austen is noted so this is how you will very simply be able to attempt both kind of chronology based questions without putting any extra effort so this is called smart work technique with that note I come to an end there are many such more videos which are lined up in my timeline that I would be uploading very soon on this channel where I'm going to burst other myths that you might have in your mind in regards to UGC net exam preparation if you have any other questions like these please put that in the comments below I'm going to definitely make a video on these questions as well with that note I would like to take your leave that's it for this video lecture we'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 arpitakarwa.com