OTET Paper 2 cheat sheet

Piaget's stages: sensorimotor (0-2, object permanence), preoperational (2-7, egocentrism, conservation absent), concrete operational (7-11, conservation and reversibility with concrete objects), formal operational (11+, abstract and hypothetical reasoning).

Vygotsky's ZPD is the gap between what a learner can do alone and what they can do with guidance; scaffolding is temporary support faded as competence grows.

Kohlberg's moral levels: preconventional (punishment/obedience, instrumental exchange), conventional (good boy/girl, law and order), postconventional (social contract, universal ethical principles).

Erikson's psychosocial crises include trust vs mistrust (infancy), autonomy vs shame (1-3), initiative vs guilt (3-6), industry vs inferiority (6-12), identity vs role confusion (adolescence).

Krashen's affective filter: anxiety, low motivation and low self-confidence raise the filter and block intake; a low-anxiety classroom lowers it.

Assessment terms: formative assessment is ongoing and diagnostic; summative assessment judges achievement at the end; norm-referenced compares to peers, criterion-referenced compares to a set standard.

Inclusive education principles: least restrictive environment, reasonable accommodation, individualized education plans, and adaptation of content, process and product.

Learning theories: behaviourism (stimulus-response, reinforcement), cognitivism (schema, information processing), constructivism (knowledge built from experience), social learning (modelling and observation).

Bloom's revised taxonomy order: remember, understand, apply, analyse, evaluate, create; higher-order objectives use the upper three verbs.

Linguistic levels: phonology (sound system), morphology (word formation, morphemes), syntax (sentence structure), semantics (meaning), pragmatics (contextual use).

The four language skills develop in the order listening, speaking, reading, writing; receptive skills precede productive skills in natural acquisition.

Reading models: bottom-up (letter to sound to meaning), top-down (meaning-driven prediction), interactive (both in parallel); skimming is fast global reading, scanning is locating specific detail.

Communicative competence (Hymes) has four components: grammatical, sociolinguistic, discourse and strategic competence.

L1 interference causes errors such as direct translation, article omission, preposition substitution and phoneme substitution; contrastive analysis predicts these, error analysis studies actual learner errors.

Direct method forbids translation and uses only the target language; grammar-translation uses rules and translation; CLT prioritizes meaningful interaction and fluency over form drilling.

A morpheme is the smallest meaningful unit; free morphemes stand alone (book), bound morphemes attach (un-, -ed); inflection changes form without changing word class, derivation may change word class.

Phonetics terms: place of articulation (bilabial, alveolar, velar), manner (stop, fricative, nasal, lateral), voicing (voiced vs voiceless); vowel description uses height, backness and rounding.

Language evaluation tools: cloze test (deleted words at intervals), dictation, portfolio, rubric-scored writing, and oral interview with analytic or holistic scoring.

English tenses: present perfect (past action with present relevance, formed have/has + past participle) vs simple past (finished time, with definite time markers such as yesterday, in 2010).

Passive voice: be + past participle, used when the agent is unknown, unimportant or the object is the topic; only transitive verbs passivize.

Conditionals: first (if + present, will + base), second (if + past, would + base, unreal present), third (if + had + past participle, would have + past participle, unreal past).

Reported speech shifts tense one step back, changes pronouns to the reporter's perspective, and adjusts time and place words (now to then, here to there, tomorrow to the next day).

Subject-verb agreement traps: collective nouns take singular verbs in Indian English usage; each, every, either, neither are singular; a number of takes plural, the number of takes singular.

Articles: a/an with singular countable nouns on first mention, the with previously mentioned or unique referents, zero article with plurals and uncountables in generic sense.

Preposition and phrasal verb accuracy matters most in error correction items: depend on, consist of, comply with, look after, put off, give in.

Reading comprehension item types: main idea, specific detail, inference, vocabulary in context, tone/purpose; inference answers must be supported by the passage, not by outside knowledge.

Writing assessment criteria: task achievement, coherence and cohesion, lexical resource, grammatical range and accuracy.

Area formulas: triangle 1/2 x base x height; parallelogram base x height; trapezium 1/2 x (sum of parallel sides) x height; circle pi r squared; sector (theta/360) x pi r squared.

Volume: cuboid l x b x h; cylinder pi r squared h; cone 1/3 pi r squared h; sphere 4/3 pi r cubed; total surface area of cylinder 2 pi r (r + h).

Pythagorean triplets to recognize: 3-4-5, 5-12-13, 7-24-25, 8-15-17, 9-40-41; any multiple of a triplet is also a triplet.

Quadratic: for ax squared + bx + c = 0, roots are [-b +/- sqrt(b squared - 4ac)] / 2a; discriminant positive gives two real roots, zero gives equal roots, negative gives no real roots.

Percentage and profit: profit percent = (SP - CP)/CP x 100; successive discounts of a% and b% equal a single discount of a + b - ab/100 percent.

Simple interest = PRT/100; compound amount = P(1 + R/100)^T; for half-yearly compounding use R/2 and 2T.

Science process skills for assessment: observation, classification, measurement, inference, prediction, hypothesis, experiment control and variable identification.

Newton's laws: first (inertia), second (F = ma), third (equal and opposite action-reaction on different bodies); weight = mg, mass is constant.

Electricity: Ohm's law V = IR; series resistance adds directly; parallel resistance 1/R = 1/R1 + 1/R2; power P = VI = I squared R.

Photosynthesis equation: 6CO2 + 6H2O in presence of light and chlorophyll gives C6H12O6 + 6O2; chlorophyll absorbs mainly blue and red light.

Indian chronology anchors: Indus Valley civilization (c. 2500-1500 BCE), Mauryan empire (321-185 BCE, Ashoka c. 268-232 BCE), Gupta period (4th-6th century CE), Mughal empire (1526-1857), British crown rule from 1858, independence 1947.

Reform and freedom milestones: Brahmo Samaj founded 1828 by Raja Ram Mohan Roy; INC founded 1885; Partition of Bengal 1905; Jallianwala Bagh 1919; Dandi March 1930; Quit India 1942.

Latitude and longitude: latitude parallels run east-west and measure distance north or south of the equator (0 to 90); longitude meridians run north-south, converge at poles, and define time zones at 15 degrees per hour.

Indian physical divisions: Himalayas, Indo-Gangetic plain, Peninsular plateau, Coastal plains, Islands; the Tropic of Cancer crosses India at about 23.5 degrees N.

Monsoon mechanism: differential heating of land and sea, the ITCZ shift, and the Arabian Sea and Bay of Bengal branches; the Western Ghats cause orographic rain on the windward side and a rain shadow to the east.

Indian polity: Fundamental Rights in Part III (Articles 12-35), Directive Principles in Part IV (Articles 36-51), Fundamental Duties in Article 51A added by the 42nd Amendment 1976.

Constitutional bodies vs statutory bodies: Election Commission, UPSC, CAG and Finance Commission are constitutional; NHRC, NITI Aayog and CVC are statutory or executive.

Economic terms: GDP is output within borders, GNP adds net factor income from abroad; inflation is a sustained rise in the general price level, measured by CPI or WPI.

Map skills sequence: title, direction (north arrow), scale, legend, then grid reference; a large-scale map shows small area with more detail.