CAT 2010: How to crack Verbal Ability section (Part 2)

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CAT 2010: How to crack Verbal Ability section (Part 2)
Words: 965 | Date: Tue, 11 May 2010

In the last article on Verbal Ability section of CAT, you have seen what the main contents of the section are. In the Part 2 of the article, you will know the preparation strategies of the Verbal Ability section. Regarding the preparation strategy, the experts opine that reading is the best method. “Good grammar or contextual usage, good reading and comprehending skills, and good reasoning skills are the key to a good performance in the verbal section of the CAT entrance exam,” says Vinayak Kudva, product Head, IMS Learning. R Shiva Kumar, Director, R & D, Career Launcher adds to it by saying, “You can strengthen the Verbal Ability section by developing a good reading habit and understanding the words through their roots.”

Preparing for Verbal Ability
The preparation can be best done by reading a lot and understanding the meaning of each word according to their context. “Reading passages along with building up a good vocabulary will go a long way in mastering this section. In fact reading a passage helps to remember the words and their contextual meanings more than just reading the words alone with their meanings,” mentions Manish Saraf, COO, PT Education.

Along with that, you should also ensure that you have enough grammatical clarity. Even if you have over thousand words in your stock, if you are not well versed, it will spoil everything for you. “In order to do well in Verbal Ability you need three things, reading, clarity on English grammar basics and building up your vocabulary,” says Saraf.

For the Reading Comprehension section, the best way is to read and then write its summary. It will help you in understanding the theme of the passage and hence solving the related questions. Kumar shared the similar strategy by saying, “Reading comprehension improves through sustained reading habits. They may be books, articles from magazines/newspapers. So it does not make sense if I were to indicate a few books. I suggest if you are not at all into reading it would make sense to start with some bestsellers in the market.” You should also work on speed reading. It would help you solve lengthy Reading Comprehension passages in a short span of time. Kudva suggests, “You can understand the theme of the passage from the first few lines. Focus on three to four main words of the sentence and the main paragraphs in the passage. You can mark the important points/ words/sentences in the beginning but gradually you should be able to identify these without marking them.”

For developing the word power and grammar, reading will help you too. Whenever you come across a new word, mark that and check the meaning in the dictionary. Also contextualize the word and its usage. Captain Walia, faculty of IMS Learning suggested that knowing the words and their grammars is very important. It is also necessary to associate them properly. He suggested associating an image or a context with a word, in that way one can never forget its meaning. For e.g. associate the word sophistication with Amitabh Bachhan. He finally suggested, “Don’t try to mug up grammar as set of rules. See the meaning and understand the connection.”

Your grammatical skills will automatically develop while reading. “While reading you will automatically learn working grammar, build your vocabulary and also enhance your critical thinking skills,” says Gejo Sreenivasan, Principal Consultant, Career Launcher.

Books & Preparation material for Verbal Ability
As has been mentioned by the experts, the reading material for preparing the Verbal Ability section can be anything from newspapers to journals to any book of fiction and non fiction. Saraf gives a list of books which you can refer. ‘High School English Grammar and Composition’ by Wren and Martin, ‘Word Power Made Easy’ by Norman Lewis, ‘Verbal Ability’ by Arun Sharma, ‘A Communicative Grammar of English’ by Geoffrey Leech, ‘A Word A Day: A Romp through Some of the Most Unusual and Intriguing, Words in English’ by Anu Garg, ‘Business English and Communication’ by Clark Grade C, ‘All about Words’ by Rosenblum and Nurenberg, ‘30 Days to a More Powerful Vocabulary’ by Wilfred Funk and Norman Lewis, The GRE and GMAT exam preparation books like ‘Kaplan GRE Verbal’, ‘Princeton GRE Verbal’, ‘Princeton GRE Verbal’ and ‘Kaplan GMAT Verbal’.

Saraf also suggests names of some useful newspapers such as The Hindu, The Times of India, Economic Times, and The Statesman. For magazines, he named Business and Management Chronicle’ by Chronicle Publications, ‘Business Line’ by The Hindu Group, ‘Competition Success Review’, ‘Business Today’ by India Today Group, ‘Business World’. There are some must have materials which Saraf mentioned for you: a pocket size dictionary, ‘Chapter-wise 12 Years Solved Paper’ by Disha Publications and ‘CAT Topic-wise 15 year Solved Papers’ by Disha Publication.

Kudva says that you should refer to previous years CAT papers to get the idea of the kind of questions and then prepare accordingly. Sreenivasan gives a time table for studying the Verbal Ability section. “Spend 15 minutes to 1/2 hour for editorials. Then practice for 45 minutes to an hour.

Practice & Test for Verbal Ability section
Like the other sections, taking regular mock tests. You can take sectional as well as full length mock tests. “Everyday make it a point to either solve one reading comprehension passage or/and read and analyze the editorials of a national daily. Try and ensure that the passages are from across topics with a special focus on topics that you find challenging,” suggests Sreenivasan.

To read the Part 1 of this article, click on the following link: http://www.mbauniverse.com/article/id/3217/Verbal_ability_preparation_1

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