EMRS JSA common mistakes
EMRS JSA · Understand the traps and how to avoid them.
Spending the first minutes on a single tough arithmetic question instead of sweeping the paper once, so 15–20 easy one-line items at the end are never reached.
Sectional time pressure plus the habit of solving strictly in serial order; candidates over-invest in the first question they cannot crack because it feels like sunk effort.
What to do instead
Do a two-pass strategy: first pass answers only items solvable in under 45 seconds and marks the rest; second pass returns to marked items. Practise with a 60-second-per-question timer so the sweep becomes automatic.
Applying the wrong operation to percentage, profit-loss and average problems - for example computing 20% of the selling price when the question says profit is 20% on cost.
Formulas are memorised as text rather than derived; candidates read 'profit of 20%' and grab the nearest formula without fixing the base quantity.
What to do instead
Before calculating, write the base explicitly (cost price, marked price, original value) on rough paper. Drill 20 mixed problems where the same numbers appear with different bases, and check each answer by reversing the operation.
Losing marks in reasoning on seating-arrangement and blood-relation puzzles by drawing the diagram incompletely, then answering from memory.
These puzzles need a stable external representation; working memory overloads after four or five clues, so later clues silently contradict earlier ones.
What to do instead
Adopt a fixed notation (circles for fixed seats, arrows for facing direction, brackets for gender) and redraw the full arrangement before reading the options. Verify the final diagram against every clue once, in order.
Guessing on synonym/antonym and idiom items from the sound of the word rather than its meaning, especially with near-homophones and idioms whose literal reading is misleading.
Vocabulary is built passively from reading; candidates recognise a word but not its precise sense, and idioms like 'to pull someone's leg' invite literal interpretation.
What to do instead
Maintain a 200-item personal list of confused word pairs and idioms with one original example sentence each, reviewed weekly. In the exam, substitute the option back into a sentence and reject any option that changes the register or part of speech.
Answering error-spotting and sentence-improvement questions by ear, choosing the option that 'sounds right' without checking subject-verb agreement, articles and prepositions.
Spoken English tolerates errors that written grammar tests penalise; candidates read the sentence quickly and their internal ear approves the first plausible option.
What to do instead
Run a fixed checklist on each sentence: verb agrees with subject, tense sequence, article before countable nouns, preposition collocation, parallelism. Eliminate options that fail any single check before comparing the survivors.
Treating Hindi grammar questions on sandhi, samas and muhavare as pure recall and skipping the ones not memorised, instead of applying the classification rules.
School-level grammar is revised as lists of examples rather than as rules; candidates cannot identify a new compound word because they only know the textbook samples.
What to do instead
Learn the diagnostic tests: for samas, ask which case relation the compound encodes (tatpurush, dvigu, bahuvrihi); for sandhi, check which vowel or consonant meets which. Apply the test to 10 unfamiliar words daily rather than re-reading the same list.
Confusing similar-looking Devanagari characters and matras (श/ष/स, व/ब, ि/ी, ु/ू) while reading comprehension passages in Hindi, leading to misread words and wrong answers.
Fast reading in a familiar script relies on word-shape recognition; under time pressure the eye skips matras, and the resulting misreading is never noticed.
What to do instead
Slow down only for keywords in the question stem and options, and copy the exact word from the passage onto rough paper when two options look similar. Practise 10 minutes of careful dictation-style reading daily to sharpen matra discrimination.
Answering computer-knowledge items from general familiarity with phones and apps, e.g. treating 'Save As' as identical to 'Save' or mixing up RAM and ROM roles.
Everyday device use hides file-system and hardware distinctions; candidates never had to name the menu path or explain volatile memory, so they pick the most familiar-sounding option.
What to do instead
Build a one-page table of distinctions that examiners test: Save vs Save As, RAM vs ROM vs cache, cut vs copy, relative vs absolute cell reference, http vs https. Verify each entry by actually performing the step in an office suite.
Reciting office-procedure steps (drafting, noting, dispatch, file movement) in the wrong order or omitting the noting stage, because the sequence is memorised as a phrase rather than a flow.
Procedure is learned from summary lists without the logic of who receives what and why, so one missing link collapses the sequence under exam pressure.
What to do instead
Draw the flow as a diagram once: receipt and diarisation, submission, noting, draft approval, dispatch, and record keeping. Then answer questions by tracing the item's position on the diagram instead of recalling a sentence.
Leaving OMR bubbles blank or half-shaded on skipped questions and not reserving the final five minutes for transfer, so correctly solved items score zero.
Candidates solve in the booklet and plan to transfer at the end, then run out of time; partially erased or faint marks are also misread by the scanner.
What to do instead
Transfer each answer to the OMR sheet immediately after solving it, and use a dark ballpoint with a single clean stroke. Reserve a fixed last three minutes for a bubble-by-bubble audit against the booklet before the bell.