CAT Verbal Ability Preparation

Tips to help you prepare for CAT Verbal Ability and Reasoning section

Since communication is main and a very important tool in gallery of management, CAT Verbal ability section tests a person’s skill at the English Language. That’s why the CAT paper increased the number of questions in this section, points to the importance that the examiners attach to testing us on Verbal Ability and Reasoning skills. By this, the b-schools want to know how well a person can communicate.
Of all CAT sections, is the area that can be solved fastest in the CAT exam is Verbal Ability. However, this section happens to be the most difficult one to prepare for. In fact, unless one has some amount of grounding in grammar, and a sizable vocabulary (which you can build only from extensive reading), this area can turn out to be your biggest CAT barricade.
Four types of questions have been seen in CAT:

• Paragraph Forming (rearranging a jumbled paragraph).
• Grammar.
• English Usage and Vocabulary.
• Critical Reasoning.

For cracking this section you need good understanding of grammar as well as a good vocabulary. Below are few preparation tips to improve your Verbal Ability:

• Improving word power by reading:

  The best way to improve your vocabulary of words is by reading a lot. The more you will read, newer the words you will come to know and hence strengthen your stock of words. The most important part of Verbal preparation is the reading up. [In fact, not only does it help in the Verbal section of CAT but also in General Awareness section of other MBA entrances]. This effort can’t be intensive in nature, since we need to assimilate what we read. Thus the reading has to be consistently spread out across a few months or more.

• What to Read:

  You can start by reading something which interests you. It can be fiction or sports and entertainment page of the newspaper. Slowly you can advance your reading habits but only reading newspapers or best sellers books is not going to help you much for MBA. You should read classic and acclaimed literature. Like books of Amitabh Ghosh, Arundhati Roy etc. are enriched with words that are not used in daily life and can thus empower your word vocabulary. While reading in English we should make a conscious effort to start thinking in English as well, since this can be a weak point for many of us who come from non English backgrounds.

• How to Read:

  Reading an article it is important, but to discuss it with friends who already have read it will increase your understanding. Similarly, it is important to get a feel as to how arguments are built by good writers and what is an expected line of thought, following a seen passage. This again comes with discussing the passage with friends who have read it.
  After you have finished your reading for the day (for Reading Comprehension), check out the meanings of all the words that you have come across that day, and write them down in a book, or make flash cards for yourself. Everyday you will come across a minimum of 10 words that you either do not know the meaning of, or are not sure about. This exercise will ensure that over the next 150 days, your repertoire of words will increase by at least 1500 words.

• Practice:

  The CAT verbal ability section too calls for a lot of practice, which should be duly done in the last few months. The scores in the Reading Comprehension section get tremendously boosted by practice followed by analysis of the questions attempted incorrectly. The associated explanation to an answer is very important since it shows what the examiner thought was the correct answer, why and how it was different from what we thought. While answering subsequent RCs, we should be mindful not to repeat earlier mistakes.
  Make sure you note the errors you made, as well as the correction to the same. This way, in a week you will be solving about 50 to 75 questions, and in five weeks you will have solved around 250 to 350 questions. After that, implement whatever you have learnt while attempting the Mock Papers. Ensure that you crack Paragraph Forming within a certain time limit, so that you do not overshoot the time available.
  I hope the above given CAT Verbal ability preparation tips will be useful to you to crack CAT exam.