General Knowledge and Current Affairs: Method and Coverage
Core concepts
General knowledge rewards breadth organised by category: geography (capitals, rivers, straits, mountain ranges, climate zones), international organisations and their mandates, economic indicators, constitutions and governance, science and technology milestones, sports, and awards. Current affairs requires a rolling window of roughly the past year: elections and leadership changes, summits, treaties, disasters, space missions, and major economic decisions.
Build a system rather than a list. Group facts by region and by institution, and attach each fact to a why - an organisation's founding purpose, a treaty's dispute, a currency's central bank. For Bangladesh-focused items, know the constitution's structure, the branches of government, administrative divisions, and major development indicators. For international items, know the UN system, the Bretton Woods institutions, major regional blocs, and the headquarters cities of each.
Common traps
Questions exploit near-misses: headquarters versus founding city, secretary-general versus president, the year of an event versus the year of a related treaty. Currency and capital questions often pair a country with a neighbour's currency. In current affairs, an outdated fact is a trap - verify whether a leader or officeholder still holds the post.
Worked example
A question asks which institution publishes the Human Development Report. Rule of thumb: link the report to its parent body - the UNDP, a UN programme headquartered in New York - rather than to the World Bank or IMF, which publish different flagship reports. Whenever a question names a report, index, or rank, recall its issuing institution first; the answer usually follows.