What is happening in CSS exam ? By Sir Umar Riaz I had a chance to look at Precise & Composition paper for CSS and my head is still spinning from the alien words in there. While CSS exams are meant to test candidates on their analytical, linguistic, and communication abilities, this paper appears work of someone living in some cave with archaic books or someone desperately wants people to fail. The vocabulary on first page is a real nightmare. A senior colleague helped me with these words. • Frabjous (from Lewis Carroll’s Jabberwocky—a made-up word) • Accubation (a highly obscure word for reclining while eating) • Cromulent (a satirical, pop-culture-derived word from The Simpsons) • Finagle (a highly informal slang word) • Velleity (rarely used in modern writing) The grammar and sentence correction portion has number of artificially convoluted and unnatural sentences. Instead of testing real-world grammatical competence, this section appears like a contest which examiners want to win by any means , even unfair means. It would have been more helpful if errors were realistic and relevant to modern English writing, such as common grammatical, style and sentence construction mistakes in professional or academic communication. The comprehension and precis passage focuses on abstract, philosophical ideas like wandering, rootedness, and existential philosophy fused with Nietzschean ideas, Romanticism vs. Rationalism, and existential detachment—topics that belong in postgraduate philosophy exams rather than a general competitive English test. A better passage would focus on global issues, public policy, governance, technology, or societal challenges, all of which are more relevant to civil servants. This paper is a poor test of practical English proficiency and seems deliberately designed to fail candidates rather than assess them objectively . It appears to be drafted by someone living in 19th century, but has seen Simpsons. I must confess that even today, I don’t know meaning of more than three vocabulary words , and I consider myself quite well read . Once upon a time I also happened to have secured position in CSS but not sure I would have been passed this paper, which is not just designed for mass failures but contains irrelevant expressions, encourages cramming and is detached from real world. I think time to ask the examiners, wake up and smell the coffee. AI revolution is sweeping the world and you want people to know meaning of “Frabjous” #copied