We are firm believers in the concept of Kaizen, which is a Japanese term for consistent improvement. After the country was ravaged by the horrors of World War 2, the Japanese adopted the idea of Kaizen or improving on a consistent basis. Within a span of 30 years, the tiny island destroyed by the atomic bomb transformed into a glitzy super power.
This story of transformation is very inspirational. Anyone who believes in improving on a daily, weekly and monthly basis can see amazing results. This is especially true in CAT and Verbal Ability because there is no shortcut to success here.
Download Verbal Ability for CAT PDF
Improvement in the percentile takes time and consistent hard work. We advise students to spend at least a couple of hours every day working on their areas of weakness. Needless to say, the area of paramount importance in Verbal Ability is Reading Comprehension. Questions on topics like Critical Reasoning, Para Jumbles, Para Completion and Summary are all derived from the bedrock of Reading Comprehension. The ability to grasp the gist of a passage and infer from it can be improved with regular practice.
To improve in RC, initially make a small summary of the RC that contains the gist of the article along with the ‘tone’ of the author. The length of the summary should be around 10% the length of the article. So, if you read a 1000 word essay, the length of the summary should not be more than 100 words. After writing the summary, go back and read the article again to see if you missed out on any points. Follow this method for three essays a day and within 2-3 weeks, you will find yourself getting better at RCs.
Take care not to waste time on remembering the meanings of difficult words. Questions of that sort are seldom asked in CAT. The key to cracking CAT is understanding or comprehending the question and logic well. The institutes don’t want to test just your English Vocabulary skills; the emphasis is a lot more on your comprehension skills.
In addition to RC, due importance should be given to Grammar and Sentence Correction. Hence, make it a point to read the rules of Grammar from renowned books like Wren and Martin. This is an area where the accuracy of answering questions can be close to 100%. All that is needed is confidence and consistent hard work.
