Arun Sharma - How To Prepare For Verbal Ability And Reading Comprehension For CAT

About the Authors

Arun Sharma is a post graduate from the prestigious Indian Institute of Management (IIM), Bangalore. He has been training corporate houses and CAT aspirants since 1996 and has personally trained over a thousand students into the IIMs and other top B Schools. Besides, he holds the unique distinction of clearing the CAT successfully 14 times in a row, with a score of 99.99 percentile in CAT 2008.

Meenakshi Upadhyay is an alumnus of IIM Bangalore and has been deeply involved in training students for the CAT and other management entrance examinations over the last decade. A British c ouncil certified trainer for communications and business English, she is also a corporate trainer in the fields of personality, language, etiquette and communication training.

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Preface to the Fifth Edition

T he CAT is a dynamic examination and the pattern keeps changing from time to time. We as authors and trainers try our best to keep abreast of the latest pattern and provide content which is up-to-date and relevant in the context of the examination.

Some changes noticed in the CAT exam over the years are as follows:

The number of questions has been reduced drastically.

There are now only two sections in the examination as opposed to the earlier four and three sections.

The number of questions in each of the two sections is 30, adding up to a total of 60 questions.

CAT has introduced two to three different question types in the Verbal section like Phrasal Verbs, Irrelevant Sentence and Paragraph Completion / Last Sentence of the Paragraph.

The size of the comprehension passages has also reduced. It is now a one page passage as opposed to longer passages in the earlier CAT question papers.

The number of questions in the Comprehension section is now limited to 10 questions with a break up of three to four questions per passage.

Key Changes in this Edition

Inclusion of three important chapters namely Phrasal Verbs, Irrelevant Sentence and Paragraph Completion or the Last Sentence of the Paragraph.

Addition of seven fully solved tests in Reading Comprehension with solutions according to the latest pattern.

Inclusion of a comprehensive list of phrasal verbs in the chapter on Phrasal Verbs which will be a good resource for learning, practice and revision.

Some older questions which have lost their relevance have been removed.

The newly-added question types have detailed solutions .

The write-up on how to take a holistic approach to the online CAT has been updated.

The book is now in sync with the latest examination pattern and the aspirant will hopefully find this a one-stop solution for the English portion of CAT and other popular MBA entrance examinations.

We would like to remind all students preparing for these highly competitive examinations that a thorough preparation of the English section is imperative for success in CAT and other similar MBA entrance examinations.

Through this book, we are providing you with an invaluable resource for improving your language section score drastically. Contained in this book is the very best advisory for each and every question type as also for developing your skills in comprehending and understanding the English language. Your job is to ensure that you follow the process diligently.

KEY ISSUES IN PREPARATION

(i) Sentence Comprehension as the Core Skill in English

For many CAT aspirants, especially those who do not have an English medium educational background, this section represents the biggest hurdle in the CAT and indeed so, in most other management entrance exams.

At the same time, even for students who have the best education and are seemingly good at English, the experience of the past few years CAT papers shows us that being good at speaking and conversing in English does not automatically guarantee a top percentile score.

(ii) The Role of Reading in Developing Your Language Solving Skills

The most commonly heard advice for career aspirants when it comes to preparing for this all important section is Read more and more. So it is your right to ask, If I read more and more, would I get a solution to my problems in the language section in a time frame of say, four months?

The answer to this question is largely in the negative. The reason is that, for you to develop your scores in Verbal Ability (VA) and Reading Comprehension (RC) by just reading more and moreyou require, maybe, a two to three year cycle of preparation. A mere four months would be more like scratching the surface for the same.

We are not saying for a moment that reading is not important for preparing yourself for this section. Reading more and more remains one of the primary activities that you would still need to do, but rather than doing it blindly it would definitely be better for you if you did it with a clear purpose.

So lets first try to set the objectives of reading more and more.

One of the key problems aspirants face when they take the CAT is that the language is too complex and the options for the answer to the question asked are too similar for comfort.

Your comfort with the language you read in the examination is going to depend on three broad factors. These give rise to the possibilities of the kind of language you are going to face:

Short Sentences (1015 words long) versus Long Sentences (25+ words long)

Easy Vocabulary versus Tough Vocabulary

Familiar Topic versus Unfamiliar Topics

So obviously, short sentences, easy vocabulary and familiar topics would be the easiest to handle while you would have to grapple with long sentences, tough vocabulary and unfamiliar topics.

So one of your primary objectives has to be to improve your skill in handling the most complex language scenarios that the above three dimensions can throw up.

What we are referring to would be clear from the example below:

Consider this paragraph from a reading comprehension section of the CAT 2008 question paper:

Finally, while we still have some other past societies to consider before we switch our attention to the modern world, we must already be struck by some parallels between the Maya and the past societies. As on Mangareva, the Maya environmental and population problems led to increasing warfare and civil strife. Similarly, on Easter Island and at Chaco Canyon, the Maya peak population numbers were followed swiftly by political and social collapse. Paralleling the eventual extension of agriculture from Easter Islands coastal lowlands to its uplands, and from the Mimbres floodplain to the hills, Copans inhabitants also expanded from the floodplain to the more fragile hill slopes, leaving them with a larger population to feed when the agricultural boom in the hills went bust. Like Easter Island chiefs erecting ever larger statues, eventually crowned by Pukao, and like Anasazi elite treating themselves to necklaces of 2000 turquoise beads, Maya kings sought to outdo each other with more and more impressive temples, covered with thicker and thicker plaster reminiscent in turn of the extravagant conspicuous consumption by modern American CEOs. The passivity of Eater chiefs and Maya Kings in the face of the real big threats to their societies completes our list of disquieting parallels.