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CAT Tips: Introduction to Verbal Area
Published on Wed, Nov 18, 2009 at 02:43 in India section
Tags: Cat Exam, Mba , About the Autor
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About the Autor: Rahul Reddy, Director T.I.M.E, Mumbai: Rahul Reddy is a management graduate from IIM Calcutta prior to which he completed his bachelors' degree in Mechanical Engineering from Kakatiya University. He has had vast and varied experience in the corporate world working in such organisations as Lakme', Hindustan Lever and Mirc Electronics (the marketers of ONIDA brand of TVs). After a stint in teaching at T.I.M.E. Hyderabad, he set up the T.I.M.E. centre in Kolkata. He has an experience of over four years in teaching and is now one of the Directors of T.I.M.E. – Kolkata.
Introduction to Verbal Area
The 'English' section of CAT essentially comprises of questions on Reading Comprehension and Verbal ability. Over the last few years, this section has become a major cause of ulcers for CAT takers. Lets try and understand why.
Until a few years back this was a relatively high scoring section with cutoffs higher than in the QA and DI areas. Over the past few years, questions have become very subjective/inferential. The answer choices in some cases are quite close. Also, the increase in answer choices from 4 to 5 has also increased the difficulty level of students. The RC passages have also become extremely complicated both in terms of subject as well language, though passage size has come down.
For the above reasons, accuracy levels for students has come down. Also, scores have a tendency to fluctuate from AIMCAT to another. Now that we have understood the nature of the problem, let us see how we can tackle it.
While a good accuracy would be 80 per cent for QA and LDI areas, RC/VA, we should look at 55-60 per cent as a good accuracy rate. Again, for those who are shocked by the suggestion and accuse me of encouraging gambling, let me clarify. Pure guesswork would give you 20 per cent accuracy (probability). So we are looking at three times that level, which takes some knowledge and skill. At the same time a lower accuracy should be coupled with reasonably high attempts, about 18-22 questions (Assuming 25-30 Q).
Detailed strategy for RC/VA Area
Given that we are about 2 weeks away from CAT 2009, I am going to focus on last minute tips, things that can be changed in 2 weeks.
Normally RC and VA questions form a 40-60 or 50-50 split. So lets assume a 30 Q paper with 12 RC (three passages) and 18 VA questions. I am sure you guys are smart enough to make adjustments for different combinations.
RC obviously takes time to solve. So factor in about 20-25 minutes for two passages. That leaves you 15-20 minutes for VA which should be enough for about 8-12 questions. In case, you are unable to find enough questions in VA, then you will need to attempt all three passages. i.e. 3 passages in about 30 min + 6-7 VA questions in 10 minutes.
RC strategy starts with passage selection. A simple and efficient way of selecting RC passages is to start reading from second or third paragraph. You choose or reject a passage based on your comfort with the subject and complexity of language. As some passages can start simple and get complicated, it makes sense to read a few lines from second or third para before deciding on the passage.
There are two fundamental approaches to RC, Passage First and Questions First. Both methods have their pros and cons and students should use the one that works for them.
Passage First: Essentially you read the passage first and then attempt the questions. The big mistake students make here is in taking too much time to read the passage. They worry about not remembering the details and read slowly as well reread parts of the passage. However, slowly they read the passage, they cannot recall everything. In fact, they would have to refer back to the passage for all/most of the questions.
A better approach would be to acknowledge the fact that we would need to refer back to the passage anyway for the questions. Hence, the objective of reading the passage first is to get only the key points as well as sequential structure of the passage (which makes searching for answers faster). Hence passage reading should take 3-4 minutes and the remaining time should be for solving the questions. For each question go back to the passage find the lines relevant to the questions and read very carefully for the answer.
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i am manish from hyderabad i wanted to know how much minimum questions should one attempt in each section
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