Rapid Reading and Vocabulary (Santhali word usage, idioms, synonyms/antonyms)
Rapid reading tests speed and word-sense together: matching a word to a meaning, choosing a synonym or antonym, picking the idiom that fits a blank, and answering short questions on a brief passage against the clock. Accuracy on word formation is faster to build than a long word list.
Know the layers of the vocabulary
Core words are Munda: dak (water), buru (hill), hor (man), kuri (woman), hon (child), jom (eat), sen (go), nel (see). Formal prose borrows tatsama words from Sanskrit and, in Assam, from Assamese and Sadri. Recognising the layer tells you the register and often the meaning.
Word-building beats memorising
Reduplication intensifies (sen-sen, jom-jom). Echo pairs with a vowel change give the sense 'and the like'. Compounds are head-final, so read an unknown compound from the right: buru-re is 'on the hill'. The plural -ko and dual -kin change number, not meaning, so they do not create new headwords.
Synonyms and antonyms in pairs
Learn them as pairs taken from your own lessons, with menak ('there is') and ban ('there is not') as the model: the opposite is a different word, not a prefix glued onto the positive.
Idioms and proverbs
Santhali idioms and danta katha (proverbs) work through a literal image - a body part, a farm implement, an animal - that carries the figurative sense. Never translate an English idiom word for word; Santhali has its own image for the same idea, and the exam expects that image.
Worked example
Question: 'Give the opposite of menak.' Reasoning: menak is the existential 'there is'; its negative counterpart, used as a verb form and as a standalone word, is ban. Answer: ban. Note the reasoning - the answer is not menak with a negative prefix.
Traps
Choosing a synonym that fits the dictionary but not the sentence; mistaking dual -kin forms for plurals; treating a reduplicated form as a separate headword; guessing a proverb from its English equivalent; spending so long on one item that the passage questions go unanswered.