Common Admission Test (also known as CAT) is a computer-based exam conducted for admissions in numerous management courses at various eminent institutes of India. CAT exam consists of three sections- Verbal & Reading Comprehension, Data Interpretation and Logical Reasoning, and Quantitative Ability. This blog is totally dedicated to Verbal & Reading Comprehension Section. In this blog, we will talk about various aspects of this section. This section is important because first of all this topic can’t be mastered in a few days. Secondly, it needs a lot of hard work and daily practice, especially for engineering students as designing of the engineering curriculum, never involves such subject.
One important thing which all the CAT aspirants should keep in their mind is that along with overall cut-off they have to clear sectional cut-offs as well. Hence each and every section matters equally and although many students tend to take the Verbal section lightly, toppers advise against it.
Verbal & Reading Comprehension and important topics-
VA & RC section has 10 questions in all where three marks are awarded for the correct answer and 1 mark is deducted for incorrect answer. Basically, verbal ability means this section emphasizes focus on grammar, vocabulary, error correction, jumbled paragraphs and many such topics related to verbal reasoning. Reading comprehension mostly consists of providing a paragraph and then questions based on that given paragraph. Other than this it also includes jumbled paragraphs, which has group of jumbled sentences and candidates are asked to arrange them in the right sequence. Generally CAT paper comprises of four Reading comprehensions.
Other than this some more important topics of this section include:
- Critical Reasoning- It is asked to analyze, observe and evaluate the thinking of candidates. It shows concern on the topics and interpret the objectives.
- Paragraph completion- Paragraph formation and completion is asked to judge the skills within a very limited duration of time.
- Deductive Logic- Deductive logic is asked to assess the abilities of how the conclusion can be supported.
Sample question from CAT exams-
To me, a “classic” means precisely the opposite of what my predecessors understood: a work is classical by reason of its resistance to contemporaneity and supposed universality, by reason of its capacity to indicate human particularity and difference in that past epoch. The classic is not what tells me about shared humanity—or, more truthfully put, what lets me recognize myself as already present in the past, what nourishes in me the illusion that everything has been like me and has existed only to prepare the way for me. Instead, the classic is what gives access to radically different forms of human consciousness for any given generation of readers, and thereby expands for them the range of possibilities of what it means to be a human being.
A) A classic is able to focus on the contemporary human condition and a unified experience of human consciousness.
B) A classical work seeks to resist particularity and temporal difference even as it focuses on a common humanity
C) A classic is a work exploring the new, going beyond the universal, the contemporary, and the notion of a unified human consciousness
D) A classic is a work that provides access to a universal experience of the human race as opposed to radically different forms of human consciousness
(Source: CAT 2017)
Best books for this section-
Few of good books which can be referred for preparation of this section are as follows:
- How to Prepare for Verbal Ability and Reading Comprehension for CAT by Arun Sharma
- A Communicative Grammar of English by Geoffrey Leech
- The Pearson Guide To Verbal Ability And Logical Reasoning For The CAT by Nishit K. Sinha
- Better English by Norman Lewis
- Six weeks to words of power by Wilfred Funk
Tips for preparing-
There are many things and sources available which can be used in order to practice questions based on verbal ability. Practice can easily make this section very smooth for the candidates to score good marks section-wise and overall as well. Few good tips to get over this section are as follows:
- If you are not fluent in English, try speaking to your friends or family members in English. As the better you speak, the better you will understand the language.
- Daily three to five words should be learned from the dictionary to enhance vocabulary.
- Read English newspapers and magazines regularly and develop a habit of reading novels.
- Mock tests and sample papers should be solved on a weekly basis.
- Editorial sections are the best way to improve grammatical skills hence it should also be referred on a daily basis.
- Various websites and applications can also be a good source for practising verbal questions.
Good luck!
