SSC stenographer syllabus for Grade C and Grade D

How the steno selection works

Steno has a single written round. Every candidate who applies for Grade C, Grade D or both sits the same computer based test (CBT). The Commission then shortlists candidates for the skill test in stenography based on CBT marks, separately for each grade and category. After the skill test comes document verification and final allocation to ministries and offices.

• Stage 1: CBT, objective, in English and Hindi, scored with normalisation where it runs in shifts.
• Stage 2: skill test, qualifying in nature. Your final merit is drawn from CBT marks among those who clear shorthand.
• Stage 3: document verification.

Because the skill test only qualifies you, a strong CBT score decides your rank and your choice of office, while shorthand decides whether you stay in the race at all.

SSC steno exam pattern for the CBT

A wrong answer costs 0.25 mark. Candidates eligible for a scribe get 2 hours 40 minutes. The latest cycle brought in fixed time for each section, as reported after the notice: you cannot carry spare minutes from reasoning into English, so practise each part against its own clock.

SSC stenographer English syllabus

English is half the paper, so the ssc steno english syllabus deserves half your objective study time. The Commission tests your ability to read and use correct English, and the question types are:

• Spot the error and sentence improvement
• Blanks to be filled with a suitable word, article or preposition
• Synonyms, antonyms and homonyms
• Picking the misspelt word from a set
• Meaning of idioms and phrases
• Replacing a group of words with a single word
• Voice change (active to passive) and narration (direct to reported)
• Shuffling parts of a sentence and sentences in a paragraph
• Cloze test
• Reading comprehension passages

This section also feeds your shorthand. Strong spelling and grammar cut transcription errors, since every misspelt word in your typed passage counts against you.

Reasoning and general awareness topics

General Intelligence and Reasoning

Both verbal and non-verbal questions appear, at class 12 level:

• Analogies, similarities and differences, classification
• Number series, alphabet series and non-verbal figure series
• Blood relations, direction sense and coding decoding
• Space visualisation, paper folding, mirror and water images
• Seating arrangement, analysis, judgement and decision making
• Visual memory, discriminating observation, relationship concepts
• Arithmetical reasoning and basic computation

General Awareness

• News events from India and abroad
• Indian history, art and culture and the national movement
• Physical and economic geography, India first
• The Constitution and how Indian polity works
• Basics of the economy, the Union budget and planning
• Science in daily life and recent research
• Sports events, honours, authors and India's neighbours

Recent shift reviews describe many static questions linked to news of the past year or two, such as space missions, summits and cultural events.

Skill test in stenography

You take dictation in English or Hindi, whichever you chose in the application form, for 10 minutes. You then transcribe your shorthand notes on a computer within a fixed time.

The passage is marked for errors such as omissions, wrong words and spelling slips, and each grade has a permitted error percentage. Those limits and the category relaxations are printed in the notice, so read the exact percentages in the notice of your cycle.

Where to put your hours

Most steno aspirants underestimate how long shorthand takes to build. A practical split for someone with six months:

• Shorthand: one to two hours daily, starting at 60 wpm and adding 10 wpm only once your transcription stays clean.
• English: an hour a day, alternating grammar rules with one comprehension passage and vocabulary review.
• Reasoning: 30 to 40 minutes, with timed sets of 50 questions in 30 minutes twice a week.
• General awareness: 30 minutes of current affairs plus one static subject per week.

Planning to sit more 12th level papers alongside steno? Then note that the reasoning and GA overlap heavily with the SSC CHSL syllabus and the SSC MTS syllabus.

Books and practice material

For general awareness, NCERT books from class 6 to 10 in history, geography, polity and science build the base that most GA questions draw from. For English, any standard school grammar book plus daily newspaper editorials works well. For shorthand, use a recognised Pitman or Hindi shorthand course book and timed dictation at graded speeds. The official notice on the SSC website carries the syllabus itself; read it once at the start and again before the exam. The steno eligibility page covers age relaxation, and the stenographer cut off page shows how the CBT shortlist has moved.

SSC stenographer syllabus in Hindi

एसएससी स्टेनोग्राफर परीक्षा में पहले कंप्यूटर आधारित टेस्ट होता है। इस टेस्ट में 200 सवाल हैं जिनके 200 अंक हैं: रीजनिंग के 50, सामान्य जागरूकता के 50 और अंग्रेज़ी भाषा के 100 प्रश्न। समय 2 घंटे है और किसी भी गलत जवाब पर 0.25 अंक घटाए जाते हैं। इसके बाद स्किल टेस्ट होता है, जिसमें 10 मिनट डिक्टेशन दिया जाता है। ग्रेड C के लिए गति 100 शब्द प्रति मिनट और ग्रेड D के लिए 80 शब्द प्रति मिनट है। फिर आपको कंप्यूटर पर ट्रांसक्रिप्शन करना होता है। स्किल टेस्ट केवल क्वालीफाइंग है, अंतिम मेरिट CBT के स्कोर पर तय होती है।