TNTET Paper 2 cheat sheet

Piaget's stages: sensorimotor (0–2, object permanence), preoperational (2–7, egocentrism, irreversibility, animism), concrete operational (7–11, conservation, classification, seriation), formal operational (11+, hypothetical and abstract reasoning).

Vygotsky: learning is social; the Zone of Proximal Development is the gap between what a child does alone and what the child does with guidance, bridged by scaffolding; speech moves from social to private to inner speech.

Kohlberg's three levels and six stages: pre-conventional (stage 1 punishment-obedience, stage 2 instrumental exchange), conventional (stage 3 good boy/good girl, stage 4 law and order), post-conventional (stage 5 social contract, stage 6 universal ethical principles).

IQ = (mental age ÷ chronological age) × 100; the usual bands are 130+ very superior, 120–129 superior, 110–119 high average, 90–109 average, 80–89 low average, 70–79 borderline, below 70 intellectual disability.

RTE Act 2009: free and compulsory elementary education for ages 6–14; no capitation fee and no screening at admission; pupil-teacher ratio 30:1 at primary and 35:1 at upper primary; School Management Committee with at least 75% parents.

Bloom's revised cognitive taxonomy in order: Remember → Understand → Apply → Analyse → Evaluate → Create; objectives are also classified in the affective and psychomotor domains.

Specific learning disabilities: dyslexia (reading and decoding), dysgraphia (writing and spelling), dyscalculia (number and computation), dyspraxia (motor coordination); they are specific deficits, not general intellectual disability.

Formative assessment happens during teaching and is diagnostic and feedback-oriented; summative assessment is an end-of-course judgement; NCF 2005 recommends continuous and comprehensive evaluation covering scholastic and co-scholastic areas.

Thorndike's laws of learning are readiness, exercise and effect; Pavlov's classical conditioning pairs a neutral stimulus with an unconditioned one, while Skinner's operant conditioning shapes behaviour through reinforcement and punishment.

Tamil has 12 uyir (vowels), 18 mei (consonants), 216 uyirmei (12 × 18 compound letters) and 1 ayudam (ஃ), making 247 letters in total.

Consonant classes: vallinam க் ச் ட் த் ப் ற்; mellinam ங் ஞ் ண் ந் ம் ன்; idaiyinam ய் ர் ல் வ் ழ் ள் - six letters in each class.

Tamil has eight cases (vetrumai); the markers include ஐ (accusative), ஆல் (instrumental), கு (dative), இன் (ablative), அது (genitive) and இல் (locative), while the eighth is the vocative விளி and the first case (எழுவாய்) takes no marker.

Four parts of speech: பெயர், வினை, இடை, உரி; six thogai nilai thodar: வேற்றுமைத்தொகை, வினைத்தொகை, பண்புத்தொகை, உவமைத்தொகை, அன்மொழித்தொகை, உம்மைத்தொகை.

Sangam corpus: எட்டுத்தொகை (8 anthologies), பத்துப்பாட்டு (10 idylls) and பதினெண்கீழ்க்கணக்கு (18 minor works); தொல்காப்பியம், the oldest extant Tamil grammar, is divided into எழுத்து, சொல் and பொருள்.

Language skills develop in the order Listening → Speaking → Reading → Writing; listening and reading are receptive skills, speaking and writing are productive skills.

Methods compared: Grammar-Translation relies on rules and translation; the Direct Method uses only the target language and inductive oral work; Communicative Language Teaching organises lessons around meaning-focused tasks and information gaps.

Assessment types: placement (entry level), diagnostic (locates error patterns before remediation), formative (during teaching) and summative (end of course); remedial teaching is planned from diagnostic evidence.

Error analysis separates systematic errors (interlanguage, arising from rule hypothesising) from random mistakes; contrastive analysis predicts learner difficulty from differences between L1 and L2.

Reading purposes: skimming for the gist, scanning for a specific detail such as a date or name, intensive reading for close study of a short text, extensive reading for fluency across longer texts.

Simple past versus present perfect: a finished past time marker (yesterday, in 2010, two years ago) requires simple past; unstated time with present relevance takes present perfect.

Articles: a/an are chosen by initial sound, not spelling (an hour, a European, a university); the is used for unique referents, superlatives, rivers, mountain ranges and nouns already mentioned.

Concord traps: 'one of the + plural noun' takes a singular verb; each, every, either and neither are singular; news, mathematics, physics and measles take singular verbs.

Passive voice: the object becomes subject + be in the same tense + past participle (+ by + agent); it is used when the doer is unknown, unimportant or less important than the action.

Reported speech backshift: after a past reporting verb, present → past, present perfect → past perfect, will → would; universal truths, habitual facts and past perfect forms stay unchanged.

Conditionals: Type 1 if + present simple, will + base verb; Type 2 if + past simple, would + base verb; Type 3 if + past perfect, would have + past participle.

Prepositions of time: at for clock times and noon/night, on for days and dates, in for months, years, seasons and parts of the day.

Test formats: objective items (MCQ, matching, cloze) are scored reliably and widely; subjective items (essay, letter, précis, note-making) assess expression and need a rubric with explicit criteria.

For any two positive integers, HCF × LCM = product of the two numbers, so the LCM equals (a × b) ÷ HCF(a, b); this is the standard shortcut in TET arithmetic items.

Identities to apply directly: (a + b)² = a² + 2ab + b²; (a − b)² = a² − 2ab + b²; a² − b² = (a + b)(a − b); (a + b)³ = a³ + 3a²b + 3ab² + b³.

Mensuration: triangle ½ × base × height; circle area πr² and circumference 2πr; trapezium ½(a + b)h; cuboid volume lbh and total surface area 2(lb + bh + hl).

SI units and conversions: force in newtons (kg m/s²), pressure in pascals (N/m²), work in joules, power in watts; multiply km/h by 5/18 to obtain m/s.

Newton's laws: (1) a body remains at rest or in uniform motion unless a net external force acts; (2) F = ma; (3) every action has an equal and opposite reaction.

Photosynthesis is 6CO₂ + 6H₂O → C₆H₁₂O₆ + 6O₂, occurring in chloroplasts with chlorophyll and light; respiration in mitochondria is the reverse, energy-releasing process.

pH scale: below 7 acidic, 7 neutral, above 7 basic; acid + base gives salt + water (neutralisation); red litmus turns blue in a base and blue litmus turns red in an acid.

Constitution: six Fundamental Rights (equality, freedom, against exploitation, religion, cultural and educational, constitutional remedies); the 73rd and 74th Amendments (1992) give constitutional status to rural and urban local bodies.

Geography: the Tropic of Cancer crosses eight states; the south-west monsoon (June–September) brings most of India's rain while the north-east monsoon (October–December) waters Tamil Nadu; black regur soil is suited to cotton.