The two most important skills that you must possess to score good marks in the VARC section of CAT are -
Comprehension: Reading articles from different diverse sources can accelerate your understanding capabilities. Read articles of various kinds, for example - reading psychological, philosophical, economic, and scientific articles will help. After reading an article, you should note the purpose of writing the passage, the main idea, subplots, inferences, etc. Doing this systematically over a few months will significantly enhance your comprehension skills.
Critical reasoning: One of the main purposes of the CAT is to test your CR capabilities. Of course, in real life, your problems won't come in the form of an article. But critical thinking will help you to solve most of your problems. RCs, para jumbles etc. in CAT are designed to check your critical thinking. You have to read, understand and analyze the problems in a very objective way. So, it would help if you practised as much as you can to enhance your reasoning skills.
Additionally, you should, follow the steps mentioned below to increase your score in the VA section.
Read more - Form regular reading habits. Read articles of different kinds from different sources. And, when you are reading, keep in mind the central idea or the main theme of the text that you're reading. This approach will help you map the text at one go. The editorials of The Hindu, The Guardian; the articles of The Economist are some of the sources that you can choose to read from on a regular basis.
Enhance your vocabulary - It will help you to understand the RC easily. Try to find blogs and articles that will test your vocab and understanding.
Organizing your ideas while going through the RC is the key element for cracking the same. So, you should continuously map the new information with what you have read till now while reading the paragraph.
Practice - Attempt as many tests as you can on Verbal, apart from the full mocks. Clear your doubts and keep your mistake patterns in mind before you attempt the next test.
Use quizzing apps - Use your mobile phone to continuously monitor your progress in vocabulary and keep updating your learnt words.
Analyze your performance in mock exams - Note down your mistakes. Find your weak and strong points. Work on your weaknesses.
Finally, understand that change does not happen overnight; you have to have patience and maintain consistency to get the drastic results that you are hoping for. Follow the below sources to enhance your RC comprehension.
The Hindu Editorials |
The Guardian Opinions |
The Economist
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