WBSSC SLST cheat sheet

Pedagogy of the opted subject means knowing both content (facts, concepts, methods) and how learners acquire it: plan around misconceptions, not just definitions.

For language subjects: distinguish skimming (gist), scanning (specific detail), intensive reading (close analysis) and extensive reading (fluency and pleasure).

For science subjects: a hypothesis must be testable and falsifiable; a law describes a regularity, a theory explains it, and neither is a guess.

For mathematics: state the general form of key results - e.g. (a+b)² = a² + 2ab + b², area of triangle = ½ × base × height, sum of first n natural numbers = n(n+1)/2.

For social science: use chronology, cause-and-effect and source evaluation as the three core skills; dates matter less than the sequence of change.

Concept mapping and worked examples with fading support are the standard scaffolds for teaching abstract subject content.

Subject-specific vocabulary should be taught explicitly: definition, example, non-example, and use in a sentence or problem.

Current affairs questions reward recency plus context: know the event, the institution involved, and the date or year.

Track recurring categories: appointments to constitutional offices, awards, sports championships, space and defence missions, summits, and economic indicators.

Indian constitutional offices to keep current: President, Vice-President, Chief Justice of India, Chief Election Commissioner, Comptroller and Auditor General, Speaker.

Economic indicators worth memorising: repo rate, reverse repo, CRR, SLR, CPI vs WPI, GDP vs GNP, fiscal deficit vs revenue deficit.

For international summits, pair the grouping with its members and focus - G20 (major economies), BRICS, SAARC, ASEAN, SCO, QUAD.

Space and defence: match the mission name to the agency and purpose (e.g. Chandrayaan lunar, Aditya-L1 solar, Gaganyaan crewed).

For state-level exams, add West Bengal-specific current affairs: state schemes, state awards, and appointments within the state government.

Ancient India sequence: Indus Valley Civilisation (c. 2500–1500 BCE), Vedic period, Mahajanapadas, Mauryas (321 BCE), Guptas (4th century CE).

Key Mauryan facts: Chandragupta founded the empire with Chanakya; Ashoka's Kalinga war (c. 261 BCE) led to his embrace of Buddhism and the dhamma policy.

Medieval: Delhi Sultanate (five dynasties: Slave, Khilji, Tughlaq, Sayyid, Lodi), then Mughals from 1526 (First Battle of Panipat, Babur vs Ibrahim Lodi).

Modern India: Battle of Plassey 1757, Battle of Buxar 1764, Permanent Settlement 1793, Revolt of 1857, Indian National Congress founded 1885.

National movement markers: Partition of Bengal 1905, Swadeshi Movement, Jallianwala Bagh 1919, Non-Cooperation 1920, Civil Disobedience 1930, Quit India 1942.

Constitutional history: Government of India Act 1919 introduced dyarchy; Act 1935 introduced provincial autonomy and a federal structure; independence and partition in 1947.

Bengal-specific: Bengal Renaissance figures (Rammohan Roy, Vidyasagar, Bankim Chandra, Rabindranath Tagore) and the 1943 Bengal Famine are frequent topics.

Earth's structure: crust, mantle, outer core (liquid), inner core (solid); seismic P-waves travel through solids and liquids, S-waves only through solids.

Latitude lines run east–west and measure distance north or south of the equator; longitude lines run north–south and measure east or west of the Prime Meridian.

Tropic of Cancer (23.5°N) passes through eight Indian states, including West Bengal, Rajasthan, Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh and Mizoram.

Indian rivers: Himalayan rivers are perennial and snow-fed; peninsular rivers are seasonal and rain-fed. The Ganga rises in Gangotri, the Brahmaputra in Tibet.

Monsoon mechanism: the south-west monsoon arrives around June and withdraws by October; the Western Ghats' windward side gets heavy rain, the leeward side is a rain shadow.

Soil types in India: alluvial (most fertile, northern plains), black/regur (cotton, Deccan), red (iron-rich), laterite (heavy rain, leaching), arid and mountain soils.

West Bengal geography: Sundarbans delta, Hooghly river, Darjeeling Himalaya, and the districts of the Gangetic plain are common question areas.

The Constitution was adopted on 26 November 1949 and came into force on 26 January 1950; the Constituent Assembly had 389 members initially.

Fundamental Rights (Part III, Articles 12–35) are enforceable through writs: habeas corpus, mandamus, prohibition, certiorari, quo warranto.

Directive Principles (Part IV) are non-justiciable; Article 44 (uniform civil code) and Article 48A (environment) are examples.

Fundamental Duties were added by the 42nd Amendment (1976) on the Swaran Singh Committee's recommendation.

Emergency provisions: national emergency (Article 352), state emergency (Article 356), financial emergency (Article 360).

Parliament: Lok Sabha maximum strength 552; Rajya Sabha maximum 250; a money bill can be introduced only in the Lok Sabha with the President's recommendation.

Amendments: most require a special majority under Article 368; federal provisions also need ratification by half the state legislatures.

GDP measures output within a country's borders; GNP adds net factor income from abroad. Nominal GDP uses current prices; real GDP uses constant prices.

Inflation measures: CPI tracks retail prices, WPI tracks wholesale prices; core inflation excludes food and fuel.

Monetary policy tools of the RBI: repo rate, reverse repo rate, CRR, SLR, open market operations, and the bank rate.

Fiscal deficit = total expenditure − total receipts excluding borrowings; revenue deficit = revenue expenditure − revenue receipts.

Direct taxes (income tax, corporate tax) fall on the same person; indirect taxes (GST, customs) can be shifted to the consumer.

GST is a destination-based value-added tax with slabs; it subsumed central excise, service tax and state VAT.

Poverty and employment concepts: poverty line estimation, MGNREGA (rural employment guarantee), and the distinction between organised and unorganised sectors.

Newton's laws: inertia (first), F = ma (second), equal and opposite reaction (third); weight = mass × g, with g ≈ 9.8 m/s².

Work = force × displacement in the direction of force; power = work/time; kinetic energy = ½mv².

Ohm's law: V = IR; power P = VI = I²R; resistors in series add, in parallel add reciprocally.

Human body: the heart has four chambers; blood groups follow the ABO and Rh systems; the pancreas secretes insulin and glucagon.

Photosynthesis: 6CO₂ + 6H₂O → C₆H₁₂O₆ + 6O₂, occurring in chloroplasts with chlorophyll capturing light.

Cell basics: mitochondria are the powerhouse, ribosomes synthesise protein, the nucleus holds DNA, and plant cells have a cell wall and chloroplasts.

Acids and bases: pH below 7 is acidic, 7 neutral, above 7 basic; litmus turns red in acid and blue in base.

Piaget's stages: sensorimotor (0–2), preoperational (2–7), concrete operational (7–11), formal operational (11+); learning moves from concrete to abstract.

Vygotsky's Zone of Proximal Development is the gap between what a learner can do alone and with guidance; scaffolding sits inside that gap.

Kohlberg's moral development: preconventional, conventional, postconventional levels, each with two stages.

Erikson's psychosocial stages pair a crisis with each life period; the school-age crisis is industry vs inferiority.

Bloom's taxonomy (revised): remember, understand, apply, analyse, evaluate, create - use verbs to write measurable objectives.

Formative assessment is ongoing and diagnostic; summative assessment is terminal and judgemental. Continuous and comprehensive evaluation (CCE) blends both.

Classroom management rules: state expectations explicitly, use proximity and non-verbal cues, and keep correction private while praise can be public.

Number series: check differences, then ratios, then alternating or square/cube patterns before assuming a complex rule.

Coding-decoding: convert letters to positions (A=1 … Z=26) and check shifts in both directions, including reverse alphabets.

Blood relations: draw a family tree with gender markers; never infer gender from a name alone.

Direction sense: fix north at the top, record each turn as a vector, and compute the final displacement with Pythagoras if needed.

Syllogism: use Venn diagrams; a conclusion follows only if it is true in every possible diagram consistent with the premises.

Calendar: a normal year shifts the weekday by 1, a leap year by 2; 100 years shift by 5, 400 years by 0.

Odd-one-out and analogy: identify the relation (part–whole, cause–effect, synonym, number property) before comparing options.

Subject–verb agreement: a singular subject takes a singular verb; with 'either/or' and 'neither/nor', the verb agrees with the nearer subject.

Articles: 'a' before consonant sounds, 'an' before vowel sounds (an hour, a university), 'the' for specific or unique references.

Tenses: present perfect (has/have + past participle) links past action to the present; past perfect marks the earlier of two past actions.

Active to passive: move the object to subject position and use be + past participle; keep the tense unchanged.

Common error traps: 'one of the' takes a plural noun and singular verb; 'each', 'every' and 'none' are singular in formal usage.

Vocabulary building: learn roots and prefixes (bene-, mal-, anti-, pre-) and use collocations rather than isolated word lists.

Comprehension strategy: read the questions first, locate the relevant lines, and prefer the option supported by the passage over outside knowledge.

সন্ধি: স্বরসন্ধি, ব্যঞ্জনসন্ধি ও বিসর্গসন্ধি - যেমন বিদ্যা + আলয় = বিদ্যালয় (স্বরসন্ধি)।

সমাসের প্রকার: দ্বন্দ্ব, কর্মধারয়, তৎপুরুষ, বহুব্রীহি, অব্যয়ীভাব ও দ্বিগু; বহুব্রীহিতে অন্য পদ প্রধান অর্থ প্রকাশ করে।

কারক ও বিভক্তি: কর্তৃকারকে শূন্য, কর্মকারকে দ্বিতীয়া, করণকারকে তৃতীয়া, সম্প্রদানে চতুর্থী, অপাদানে পঞ্চমী, অধিকরণে সপ্তমী।

বাক্য প্রকরণ: সরল বাক্য (একটি সমাপিকা ক্রিয়া), জটিল বাক্য (একটি প্রধান ও একাধিক অসমাপিকা/আশ্রিত খণ্ডবাক্য), যৌগিক বাক্য (দুই বা বেশি স্বাধীন বাক্য)।

অলংকার: উপমা (সাদৃশ্য), রূপক (অভেদ আরোপ), অনুপ্রাস (একই বর্ণের পুনরাবৃত্তি), শ্লেষ (দ্ব্যর্থক অর্থ), উৎপ্রেক্ষা।

বাংলা বানানের নিয়ম: 'ি' কার সর্বদা ব্যঞ্জনের পরে, 'ে' কার আগে; তৎসম শব্দে সংস্কৃত বানান অপরিবর্তিত থাকে।

বাংলা সাহিত্যের যুগবিভাগ: প্রাচীন (চর্যাপদ), মধ্যযুগ (শ্রীকৃষ্ণকীর্তন, মঙ্গলকাব্য), আধুনিক (মাইকেল মধুসূদন, রবীন্দ্রনাথ, নজরুল)।

Percentage change = (new − old)/old × 100; successive changes of a% and b% give a net change of a + b + ab/100.

Simple interest = P × R × T / 100; compound interest = P(1 + R/100)^T − P.

Profit and loss: profit% = profit/CP × 100; selling price = CP × (100 + profit%)/100.

Time and work: if A does a job in x days, A's one-day work is 1/x; combined rate is the sum of individual rates.

Speed, distance and time: distance = speed × time; for equal distances, average speed = 2xy/(x + y).

Averages and mixtures: average = sum/count; alligation gives the ratio of quantities mixed as the inverse of differences from the mean.

Mensuration: area of circle = πr², circumference = 2πr, volume of cylinder = πr²h, volume of sphere = 4/3 πr³.