Previous year paper analysis · TNPSC

TNPSC Group 4 2022 question paper analysis

By the PrepMatic team · Updated 9 Oct 2026 · 4 min read

The TNPSC Group 4 paper of 24 July 2022 followed the structure that Group 4 still uses: 100 Tamil questions, 75 General Studies and 25 aptitude, for 300 marks in three hours. By our count, 61 of the Tamil questions tested literature and culture, General Science supplied 10 General Studies questions (13%), and Tamil Nadu units supplied 22 (29%). Below are the counts, taken from TNPSC's tentative-key booklet, and what they suggest for practice.

Paper facts

The 2022 notification already carried the Part A gate: Part B was evaluated only if you scored 60 of 150 in Part A, and the total of all parts decided rank.

Part A: Tamil

The 2022 syllabus gave topic lists rather than unit counts, so we grouped the 100 questions by what they test. Treat the split as approximate.

The shape was unusual: grammar, similes and one-letter words in the opening questions, then a run of about thirty literature and culture questions (Siddhars, folk songs, epics, Tamil scholars), a second grammar stretch on prosody, sentence types, roots and alphabetical order, and a final stretch of more than thirty literature questions, including the titles earned by Periyar and a Sahitya Akademi award for a modern poet.

Parts B and C: General Studies and aptitude

The notification lists ten units for General Studies and gives no indicative counts.

Counts are our reading; a question that straddles two units went to the one its answer belongs to.

What stood out

• Tamil Nadu history led. Unit 8 had 17 questions, the largest unit, spanning Chola kings, post-Sangam texts, Palayakkarars and fort matches, Periyar's journals and Thirukkural. Five questions in Part B were on Valluvar and the Kural.
• Science was a real block. Ten questions covered cancer types and Down syndrome in biology, metallurgy and functional groups in chemistry, and hydraulic lifts, force and circuit components in physics, plus food adulterants.
• Indian National Movement was thin, with only two questions (Bhagat Singh, and a passage about the Swadeshi Steam Navigation Company). Indian history and culture had ten.
• Formats were mixed. Roughly 43 of 75 General Studies questions (57%) used match, statement, assertion-reason or ordering formats, which is more than 2024 but well below 2025.
• Current-affairs items included Mars missions by country, GI-tagged products, the 2021 Jnanpith award and the date of the first National Education Policy.
• Aptitude had 25 questions on interest, HCF and LCM, ratios, time and work, population growth, number series, dice and figure counting.

Difficulty (our reading)

Moderate. The Tamil literature block rewarded wide reading rather than clever elimination, and a few interest and divisibility problems in the aptitude section needed four or five steps. General Studies was the more forgiving half because most options were separable by one known fact.

What this means for your preparation

1. Keep SSLC science in your plan. A tenth of General Studies came from it, and General Science is one of the quickest units to revise from the Samacheer Kalvi books.
2. Build a Tamil literary timeline. If Part A leans on literature again, you need authors, works and scholars in order, not just grammar rules; see General Tamil.
3. Use 2022 for content and 2025 for format. The unit structure has since changed from ten units to six, as the Group 4 syllabus shows. Compare the 2024 analysis and the 2025 analysis to see how the style moved.
4. Work the paper, then your errors. The Group 4 previous year questions guide explains how to log misses by unit. For what scores to expect, read the Group 4 cut-off guide rather than guessing from one paper.

Practising with PrepMatic

If you keep your own science and polity summaries, PrepMatic can generate a mock from notes you upload, which suits a unit-by-unit revision like the one above. Its full-length Group 4 mock matches the 200-question, 3-hour paper, and Tamil is available as the exam language. Practice questions there are AI-generated, so use the TNPSC PDFs below for real papers. The TNPSC guide lists the other resources.

Official sources

• Group 4 2022 question booklet with tentative key (General Tamil with General Studies)
• Group 4 2022 final answer key
• Group 4 2022 notification (No. 07/2022)
• TNPSC objective-type answer keys and previous papers

Unit counts are our reading, not an official classification. Check the latest notification on tnpsc.gov.in.

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