Verbal Ability for the CAT 9788131761618, 9788131797648, 8131761614

Citation preview

Verbal Ability for the CAT

Sujit Kumar

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The aim of this publication is to supply information taken from sources believed to be valid and reliable. This is not an attempt to render any type of professional advice or analysis, nor is it to be treated as such. While much care has been taken to ensure the veracity and accuracy of the information presented within, neither the publisher nor its authors bear any responsibility for any damage arising from inadvertent omissions, negligence or inaccuracies (typographical or factual) that may have found their way into this book. Copyright © 2011 Dorling Kindersley (India) Pvt. Ltd Licensees of Pearson Education in South Asia No part of this eBook may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without the publisher’s prior written consent. This eBook may or may not include all assets that were part of the print version. The publisher reserves the right to remove any material present in this eBook at any time. ISBN 9788131761618 eISBN 9788131797648 Head Office: A-8(A), Sector 62, Knowledge Boulevard, 7th Floor, NOIDA 201 309, India Registered Office: 11 Local Shopping Centre, Panchsheel Park, New Delhi 110 017, India

VA-CAT Prelims.indd ii

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Contents

Preface

v

Introduction

1

1.

Last Sentence of a Paragraph

9

2.

Paragraph Summary

37

3.

Critical Reasoning

65

4.

Fact, Inference, Judgment

95

5.

Sentence Completion and Cloze

115

6.

Paragraph Jumbles

137

7.

Logical Set Theory

157

8.

Word Usage

183

9.

Spot the Error

197

10.

Confusable Words

221

11.

Reading Comprehension

235

12.

Analogy/Odd Word Out

273

Word List

291

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Preface

It took me quite long to finish this book. Anyone who is familiar with the CAT will admit that the questions in the CAT, especially in the verbal section and from the year 2000 onwards, demand much more than a casual comprehension of the given information. They test the candidates’ analytical and reasoning skills. The questions are beautifully crafted and generally follow clearly defined lines of reasoning. It was, hence, difficult for me to match each question in this book to the difficulty level of the CAT. However, at the end of it all, I am completely satisfied with the quality of the questions in this book. This book contains all the question types that have been asked in the CAT over the years. The purpose of this book is to make a candidate completely familiar with the different question types and discusses methods to solve these questions. This will benefit students preparing for the CAT on their own, as well as those who are going to coaching institutes by giving them additional guidelines as well as practice material. It is my earnest hope that the years of experience that I have as a verbal faculty and the learning that has happened by being with thousands of highly focused students is reflected in this book. I am sure students will find this book most useful. I will be happy to receive feedback and queries at [email protected]. SUJIT KUMAR

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Introduction

One of the most frequently asked questions about Verbal Ability in competitive examinations is, Âhow do I prepare for the Verbal section?Ê It is possible to answer this question. While students have adequate clarity about how to prepare for the Quantitative, Data Interpretation, Logical Reasoning, and General Awareness sections of competitive examinations; and even the preparation for Group discussions and Personal Interviews is better structured, preparing for the Verbal section more often than not is without clarity, structure, or direction. Most students merely satisfy themselves by solving as many questions in verbal as possible and then hope for the best in the test itself! While there is no magic bullet that will transform oneÊs verbal aptitude overnight, the unstructured ways of working only adds to the uncertainty about verbal. And precisely for this reason the decisive part of the test becomes the verbal section. A simple truth about the students taking the CAT and similar examinations is that the number of students good in mathematics is more than the number of students good in verbal. The CAT then essentially becomes a competition among those who are good in mathematics vying for the best verbal scores. While the range of scores obtained by the candidates in mathematics and DI and LR is within a narrow band of 55 to 65% of the total marks, the overall scores and percentiles of successful candidates are significantly influenced by their verbal scores! Rather than analysing such statistics further to reinforce the importance of the verbal section, one should get down to systematically tackling this aspect and not let oneÊs preparation in mathematics and DI go waste because of verbal. If you are good in mathematics and DI, you must spend a lot of time preparing for verbal rather than become better and better in your strong areas. If you are good at verbal, make sure that you spend much more time in quant and DI in order to save the exam and your chances rather than strengthen your strengths and perpetually blame the weak area for your failure. The first difficulty that a student faces about the Verbal section is that unlike quant and DI, there seems to be no clearly defined topics or concepts/principles to study (except, perhaps, grammar), but there are only different question types. And the student plunges headlong into solving as many questions as possible of all these different types, without realizing that some of these question types may need no practice at all. They may only

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Verbal Aptitude for the CAT

demand time or an intense application of the mind to solve them. I would cite Paragraph Jumbles as an example of such types. These questions need sufficient time and several readings of the sentences rather than the experience of having solved innumerable jumbled paragraphs during practice. Anyone who applies his/her mind to the given sentences and spends sufficient time arranging the sentences can get the sequence right·practice may enhance the confidence one has in dealing with these questions rather than accuracy. This is not to discount the importance of practice of solving verbal questions but only to emphasize that the preparation for verbal ability must be done with absolute clarity about what skill exactly is being tested by the particular question type.

7+(%52$'$5($67(67(' The broad areas tested in the verbal section are familiar to everyone. They are: Ć Reading comprehension Ć Verbal Logic/Reasoning Ć Grammar, and Ć Vocabulary All the questions in any competitive test fall under one of these areas. Sometimes, equal importance is attached to each area, though some examinations lay greater emphasis on a particular area. For example, almost 50 per cent of the questions in the verbal section in the CAT are reading comprehension questions. The remaining 50% of the questions give equal importance to the other areas. XAT is reasoning and vocabulary intensive. Thus, you may have to fine tune your preparation according to the specific emphasis of an exam; however, the general approach to verbal preparation is the same for all exams. This chapter throws light on this aspect of the preparation. Though it is essential to solve sufficient number of questions in each of these areas during your practice, it is far more important to realize that these areas are not watertight compartments or different topics like Geometry and Algebra.

81,),('1$785(2)9(5%$/ Verbal is essentially one area, and a unified area. Reading skill (comprehension), reasoning, vocabulary, and grammar are all indicators of oneÊs proficiency in a language rather than different areas one can or should master separately. Hence it is futile to try to improve your verbal aptitude by concentrating on one of these areas and ignoring or underplaying the others. There are students who believe (I do not know how far it can be true) that they are good in reasoning but not in vocabulary, or grammar, or reading comprehension. DoesnÊt one come across vocabulary items in a reasoning question? Does not one have to understand the grammatical structure (though not technically) in order to comprehend correctly? This unified nature of verbal (language) needs to be borne in mind when one begins oneÊs preparation for verbal. Hence, even when your study material or training schedules treat vocabulary, grammar etc., as separate units or types or topics, you have to understand that it is done only for convenience and for imparting a superficial structure to your efforts rather than treat them as separate areas.

Verbal Aptitude

3

What it implies is, while you spend enough time to solve questions in each of these areas in order to improve your underlying aptitude to solve these questions, verbal needs to be approached in totality as well. Hence, it is necessary to pay attention to the vocabulary items that you encounter in a reading comprehension passage at that very moment, pay attention to the complex grammatical structures in a reasoning passage, work out the line of reasoning that helps you arrive at a particular answer in a comprehension passage etc., as you solve questions of these different types. At least part of the preparation must be undertaken this way.

9(5%$/,61(9(5/267 Another point to bear in mind about verbal is that the efforts you spend in this area and the improvement in skill/proficiency that you may acquire in verbal are never wasted. To an extent, geometry stops being useful to you in life at some point or the other unless you are engaged in jobs that require geometry. This can be said about most things that you learn either in your academic pursuits or during the preparation for competitive examinations. You can ponder over whether verbal skills (vocabulary, reading skills etc.) stop being useful at any point in your life. ArenÊt impressive communication skills (effective vocabulary and clarity of thought and expression) relevant and significant wherever you are, whatever career you are in, or even in your social life? The language skills that you acquire or improve through your study and practice for a competitive examination will not stop being useful to you even if you do not get into a b-school. Such an attitude and approach to verbal will take the stress off your preparation for verbal. You will learn to like words (vocabulary) or passages (abstract reading comprehension passages) because they are useful instruments for a larger goal. A youngster with passion and communication skills is a delight for everyone else. A youngster with great passion and poor communication skills is confusing to everyone else. When you look at verbal ability from this perspective, difficult words (ideas) and abstract passages become challenges worth mastering! In short, verbal preparation ought not to be merely from the exam point of view.

+2:72,03529(5($',1*6.,//6$1'&2035(+(16,21 We have been told ad nauseam about the importance of the reading habit. Yet, we are unable to develop the reading habit. More than a lack of desire to read, lack of time constrains youngsters from developing the reading habit. If it is true about you, and you have realized it, half the battle is already won. Earmark fifteen minutes or so every day before going to sleep to read a few pages from a good book, and watch how the habit develops! It is very important, in the beginning, to read what you like for the habit to set in. If you like thrillers, read thrillers. If you like romantic fiction, read it. If you like physics, read physics. Unless you read what you like, the habit will never set in. Once you get the reading habit, it is easier to get into the preparatory mode for competitive examinations by moving on to difficult, unfamiliar, abstract and varied stuff little by little. Some of you may be worried about the lack of speed in reading, especially in the passages that you solve. Practice speed reading (in this context, merely reading fast·not worrying about speed-reading techniques etc.) for at least fifteen minutes with the newspaper

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Verbal Aptitude for the CAT

(essentially easy stuff). To begin with, when you are trying to read the newspaper very fast, ignore the loss of comprehension and concentrate on just improving your speed. You will be surprised to find, in a very short while, that improving the speed has not affected your comprehension adversely at all. On the contrary, you are able to gain better comprehension and able to process greater amounts of text by merely reading fast. That will be the first step towards improving your speed. All experiments with speed reading must be done with easy text·in which vocabulary and grammar (sentence structure) do not pose challenges. The greater speed that you have acquired in reading easy text will automatically improve your speed with more difficult text. If you have improved your speed with easy text from, say, 250 to 500 words per minute, your speed with difficult text may improve from, say, 150 words per minute to 200 words per minute. With more and more practice the speed at which you can process text will improve phenomenally.

&2035(+(16,21 Comprehension of the text one reads is not so much related to speed as to oneÊs concentration and proficiency in the language (mastery of vocabulary and grammatical structures); hence, it is necessary to consciously work towards improving your vocabulary and your comfort with complex sentence structures. Work slowly but steadily. Do not overwhelm yourself with Plato or Jean Paul Sartre to begin with. Pick up a 400ă500 word long essay (even half the length is all right) on abstract and difficult topics. Spend an hour on it·reading, analysing (using the dictionary to understand unfamiliar words), and assimilating the information. Break long and complex sentences into constituent idea units and comprehend such sentences in parts first; the whole will automatically make sense. Make verbal an experience rather than merely an exercise in solving questions. The writer should suggest, until at least three months before the exam spend half the time you devote to, verbal working in the above manner·making a difference to your language as a whole, and half the time solving all kinds of questions. About two/three months before the exam you can start spending most of your time solving questions, but not forgetting to work intensely on your reading and comprehension skills whenever possible.

+2:72,03529(92&$%8/$5< Improving your vocabulary should ideally take a two-prong approach. The first is to ignore the exam and to treat improving your vocabulary as an end in itself. The second is to learn vocabulary purely from the point of view of the exam. The first approach is not a time-bound exercise. It is undertaken not with the exam in mind, but with the honest purpose of improving oneÊs vocabulary, and thereby oneÊs reading skills, proficiency in the language, and most importantly oneÊs communication skills. One must realize that oneÊs communication skills are, as a matter of fact, equal to the number of words one has mastered. Your ability to express your thoughts clearly and precisely, and even your ability to think clearly and precisely depends on the number of words that you know. As Wittgenstein remarked, „The limits of my language mean the limits of my world.‰ Realizing this truly in oneself motivates one to earnestly work towards mastering new words and new ideas. That is the non-exam-specific approach. Towards this end, you must read widely, and use the dictionary extensively to learn new words. Any unfamiliar word that you come across is a candidate for learning·for the simple reason that it is unfamiliar.

Verbal Aptitude

5

Students find learning new words rather cumbersome. Memory is a huge problem. They are not able to retain the words they learn; they forget the words themselves; they forget the meanings more easily. Altogether, it looks like a futile exercise, and boring too. There are solutions to all these problems.

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