Odia language and English language papers
The Odia and English language papers are each of 300 marks and three hours, but they are qualifying: you must pass them, and their marks are not added to the merit total. They test whether an officer can read, comprehend, summarise and write official-standard Odia and English. Failure in either ends the candidature regardless of GS or optional scores.
What each paper contains
- Comprehension of a passage, with questions on inference and vocabulary.
- Precis writing: reduce a passage to about one-third, in your own words, retaining the central idea.
- Grammar and usage: correction, fill-in, synonyms and antonyms, idioms, sentence transformation.
- Composition: letter, report, application or short essay; translation between Odia and English.
Worked example - precis
Given a 300-word passage on Odisha's groundwater depletion, a 100-word precis should state the cause (unregulated tube wells), the consequence (falling water tables, salinity ingress) and the remedy proposed (recharge structures, crop shifting) - without examples, figures or the author's metaphors. The test is compression with fidelity: lift no sentence verbatim and stay within the prescribed limit.
Traps that cost marks
- Treating these as scoring papers and losing qualifying marks.
- Copying sentences from the passage in the precis.
- Neglecting Odia orthography and official vocabulary.
- Exceeding word limits or omitting the translation section.