9 reasons why English matters more to CSS success than people think!

If you are reading this post, chances are you probably know most of them already. Still, the importance of mastering English communication skills is worth reiterating. Here are the top 9 reasons why you should not stop investing in improving your proficiency in the language, even after you have crossed all the hoops and become a CSP officer.     

1. The Central Superior Services Examination includes two English papers that are compulsory. Fail even one of them and you are out of the race. But wait. There’s a lot more!
2. Isn’t English the medium of examination for most papers? Think about that! If you improve your grammar, vocabulary, spellings and punctuation and your penmanship (hand writing), they will serve you well in all your papers.  
3. Essay writing is the default mode of answering most of the questions in most of the subjects. If you master the English essay, you will be on top of the academic writing game across disciplines.
4. Preparation for all but a handful of optional subjects requires loads of reading. Guess the language in which you will find most of the resources for most of your papers.   
5. Being able to read a passage quickly and respond to comprehension questions requires skimming and scanning. These are reading strategies that improve one’s academic efficiency regardless of the subject.    
6. Plenty of prep resources are in the form of audio-visual lectures, discussions and interviews on YouTube, TED and other platforms.
7. What about note-taking? It should be a no-brainer that if your medium of examination is Turkish, the notes you take down during preparation would be more helpful in Turkish than in Swahili, Tamil or Tok Pisin—even if any of these happens to be your first language. Hope you get the point!
8. Being able to write a good précis amounts to being able capture the central idea and the main points in a piece. Once again, the usefulness of the skill is hardly exclusive to the English paper. Research shows the knack to spot and synthesize the gist of an article or essay is one of the measures of academic and professional success.
9. You have made it to the merit list. Now comes psychological assessment and then the interview. Guess which language gives you the ultimate edge over your competitors?         

Congratulations! You are now a Civil Servant of Pakistan. Whether you like it or not, English is still the language of our bureaucracy. Master it now: you will reap the rewards for the rest of your life! As Anwer Masood, the great poet from Gujrat says: