VARC is the trickiest section in CAT because, unlike LRDI and Quant, there is no finite set of rules and formulae that can help you get the correct answer. Getting a good grasp on the language requires prolonged practice and a lot of dedication especially if you are from a non-English medium background. However, the section can easily be conquered and one can score well with a smart strategy.
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Firstly, I would like to talk about the pattern of the section. The section can broadly be divided into two parts. One part consists of the passages or reading comprehension and the second part consists of verbal ability questions which include parajumbles, odd sentences parajumbles and parasummary. The comprehension passages contribute to 65% of the questions. A lot of people have different strategies for the two parts but I believe they are sufficiently interlinked and the base preparation for the two are similar only the practise that follows afterwards differs.
The basic mantra for doing well in this section is understanding the nature of the questions being asked. A very common issue that aspirants face is that they understand the written words literally but fail to decipher what the author of the passage is trying to convey. The nuances of language is the biggest trap for this section and to get over it, one needs a good amount of practice on a constant basis.
Now, I would like to share a few tips that helped me greatly.
- The first thing to understand is the nature of the VARC section. The section tests if you have adequate language skills. Language skill includes the ability to comprehend and accurately understand the ideas that any passage or article is trying to communicate. Here, you need to have the skill to delve deep into the underlying gist of a given passage. You have to move beyond what the words convey superficially. In order to perfect the art of understanding what a passage is trying to convey, you need to read. There is no shortcut here. One needs to invest a lot of time in reading on varied topics.
- 2. One of the best sources for reading practice is the newspaper. You can pick 2 newspapers including one business edition. Apart from newspaper articles, there are online resources such as down to earth for environmental articles, finshots for finance-related articles and sites such as 52 that publish long essays delving deep into contemporary topics. Make sure you’re reading up on a variety of topics and are not restricted to any particular domain. Ideally, you should be reading up quality articles on topics such as business, economics, psychology, environment, etc. If you observe closely the passages asked in CAT have been fairly diverse and require an in-depth understanding of issues to be able to answer.
- In the newspaper, the most important section is the editorial. A number of YouTube channels explain the editorials daily. After going through the editorial a few times, one can watch these videos and understand if their own understanding of the article was accurate or not. This exercise will also help in figuring out the tone of the writer which is a significant step toward developing a comprehensive understanding of any passage in the exam. For instance, a writer may be exaggerating in a passage and being satirical and in order to accurately identify the same, you need enough practice. The exercise of reading editorials and trying to summarise them will help in getting a good grasp of the para summary questions as well. These questions also test your ability to deduce the gist of a passage.
- Pay special attention to how these articles are structured, and how one sentence connects to the next to be able to make sense of para jumble questions. Your reading practise thus provides a base for the verbal ability section too. Trying to understand the basic rules of passage formation and sentence connections will help you have very clear conceptual understanding.
- Keep a track of your accuracy and the number of questions you are attempting in mocks. This will help you find out your sweet spot in terms of the number of questions you need to attempt in the actual exam. It will also help in getting a good idea of how accurate you are. This will prevent you from over attempting and getting too many negatives.
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I hope these tips help you in your preparation journey and you bell the CAT!
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