Format of CAT Verbal Ability Questions

Being tested in English Language Usage is an integral part of the Common Admission Test (CAT) with the main focus on English Language Usage, Vocabulary and Verbal Reasoning. The idea is to assess the understanding of the language and its usage in a logically appropriate and contextually correct manner. All through schooling and graduation, the student is expected to develop an understanding and interest in word clusters, understand the meaning of unfamiliar words, correlate ideas and further solve verbal reasoning problems testing the dimension of Verbal Ability. It is usually considered to be a scoring section in CAT.

Many a times the student arrives at answers intuitively, based on ‘language usage’ developed and refined over the years. Though students have years of grammar classes and reading behind them, it is still suggested that the students further brush up their grammar and vocabulary skills to perform well in the verbal section.      

Some key skills that a serious CAT aspirant is expected to develop includes:

i. Grammar related questions including — Articles, Parts of Speech, Phrases, Clauses, Modifiers, Subject–Verb Agreement, Tenses, Pronouns, Prepositions, Punctuation, Sentence Correction, Conjunctions, Usage of Infinitives and Gerunds in Sentences etc.

ii. Word related problems like choosing the odd word out based on — Synonyms, Phobias, Common Class/ Common Category, Logically disconnected yet apparently connected words, Single & Double Meaning Words etc. 

iii. Analogies and Reverse Analogies — Apart from testing vocabulary, analogies test the ability to see relationships between the meanings of words. A pair of words is provided and the student has to spot the relationship between the words and is expected to identify word pairs that are similarly related out of the options provided. Reverse Analogies also form a part of this group.
 
iv. Sentence Completion/ Fill in the Blanks — Student is expected to fill in the blanks which make logical sense thus providing the correct context of the sentence. Questions may be of various types: logical fill in the blanks, missing link in a paragraph, theme completion etc.  

v. Sentence Jumbles/ Sentence Correction — A Sentence is broken up into four or five parts and the parts are put in a jumbled form. The candidate is to pick up from the answer choice that gives the correct order of the parts in order to make it a readable sentence in case of a Sentence Jumble. For Sentence Correction problems, the candidate needs to identify the word/ collection of words that contains a grammatical error.

vi. Para-jumbles — Problems on Para-jumbles deal with sentence arrangements where students have to sequence sentences, statements or phrases in a logical manner. The student is assessed on her ability to relate events in a logical manner and to sequence sentences based on plain language usage.

vii. Verbal Reasoning — Skills including deductive reasoning (syllogisms), Problems based on Logical Consistency, Inferential Reasoning, Degree of Truth and Falsity etc. fall in this category and are frequently appearing type of problems in CAT.