HOW TO TACKLE READING COMPREHENSION IN CAT, Ft. S Dharmashree Shetty, IIM Udaipur 

Reading comprehension (RC) comprises most of the VARC portion in the CAT 2024 exam and I owe my score of 99.72 percentile in the VARC section to RC passages as I am not that strong in the verbal ability part. In my preparation journey I have identified some important factors that help us in making RC passages right: 

• Understanding the passage as a whole - Often we see certain facts in an option that’s exactly as in the passage and hence we select that option without reading the passage as a whole. While attempting RC passages, specifically when it asks for a summary or theme of that passage we need to select an option that gives us a broader picture rather than some fact that is not of crucial importance.

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• Ability to grasp the information provided in the previous paragraph while reading the next – Many times we just focus on one paragraph at a time whereas RC passage comprises three/four lengthy paragraphs. The questions asked in the RC section require us to link all the information given in a single passage and hence grasping all the paragraphs and combining them as one story in our mind helps us tackle RCs better.

• Taking enough time to read tricky questions – In the CAT VARC part, many questions will trick students as they ask us “All the below options are correct except” or ‘’which is not wrong’’ kind of questions. Being careful about these can help us prevent any “silly” mistakes.

• Selecting the right option when there are many right options – Sometimes we choose the first option without even bothering much about other options as we’re sure that the option is right. But we have to keep in mind that there can be many right options and we should choose the ‘’more right” option. 

• Resisting the urge to apply our prior knowledge in the RC passage- It's very important to be cautious of answering RC passages strictly as per the information given in the passage. Even if we don’t agree with the author, we should select the answer based on the author’s statements.

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Lastly, there comes a question of ‘HOW’? The way I found it useful was reading the Hindu newspaper editorials and lead articles. Initially, I found it difficult to keep up with the author from the start to the end of the article due to the use of complex vocabulary. Later with practice, I found it easy and hence was able to read RC passages which are comparatively smaller than the lead articles in one go and understand the crux of the passage.

Whether it’s news editorials or Aeon essays, reading complex write-ups and trying to make sense of them makes us ready to tackle RCs. Solving old CAT VARC questions can be a great add-on to this to get a sense of real CAT VARC. It also helps us analyse the difference between our analysis and the question paper setter’s analysis if any. With practice, the time required to complete the reading of the RCs also decreases.