Reading Comprehension Passages for CAT 2024: Download Important RC Questions PDF

Reading Comprehension Passages for CAT 2024: Reading Comprehension (RC) is a crucial part of the Verbal Ability and Reading Comprehension (VARC) section and constitutes a substantial portion in the CAT. This section assesses candidates on their ability to comprehend and critically analyse the written material and answer questions based on it. The candidates are expected to draw inferences, understand implied meanings, and evaluate arguments presented in the passages. Due to its weightage, this part contributes significantly to the overall CAT score. So performing well in this section can positively impact the aspirant’s chances of securing a high percentile. Therefore, to assist you in your preparation, we have included some important reading comprehension questions along with their answer keys.

Candidates can practice the MBA Exam Mock Test by Jagran Josh to ace the exam.

Why is Reading Comprehension important in CAT exam?

RC passages usually make up a significant part of the VARC section in CAT. Performance in RC directly influences overall CAT scores, making it pivotal for achieving high percentiles.

RC passages in CAT go beyond understanding; they require critical thinking. Candidates must infer, understand implied meanings, and evaluate arguments. This approach tests deeper understanding and analytical skills, which are crucial for success in the exam.

Also Check,

CAT Previous Year Question Paper
CAT Syllabus 2024
How to Improve Reading Speed for CAT Exam 2024?

Weightage of Reading Comprehension Passages in CAT 2023

The Verbal Ability and Reading Comprehension section have 24 questions out of a total of 66 questions. These 24 questions are further divided into Verbal Ability and Reading Comprehension. In CAT 2023, Reading Comprehension questions account for around 16 questions out of 24 VARC questions. So RC holds 24% of the total marks and 67% weightage in the VARC section.

Weightage of Reading Comprehension Passages in CAT Exam Over the Year

Over the years, the weightage of reading comprehension questions in the CAT exam has consistently remained the highest. The following graph shows the RC weightage in the CAT exam.

Reading Comprehension Passages for the CAT Exam

Passage 1 (CAT 2023 Slot 1)

The passage below is accompanied by four questions. Based on the passage, choose the best answer for each question.

Many human phenomena and characteristics – such as behaviors, beliefs, economies, genes, incomes, life expectancies, and other things – are influenced both by geographic factors and by non-geographic factors. Geographic factors mean physical and biological factors tied to geographic location, including climate, the distributions of wild plant and animal species, soils, and topography. Non-geographic factors include those factors subsumed under the term culture, other factors subsumed under the term history, and decisions by individual people. . . .

The differences between the current economies of North and South Korea . . . cannot be attributed to the modest environmental differences between [them] . . . They are instead due entirely to the different [government] policies . . . At the opposite extreme, the Inuit and other traditional peoples living north of the Arctic Circle developed warm fur clothes but no agriculture, while equatorial lowland peoples around the world never developed warm fur clothes but often did develop agriculture. The explanation is straightforwardly geographic, rather than a cultural or historical quirk unrelated to geography. . . . Aboriginal Australia remained the sole continent occupied only by hunter/gatherers and with no indigenous farming or herding . . . [Here the] explanation is biogeographic: the Australian continent has no domesticable native animal species and few domesticable native plant species. Instead, the crops and domestic animals that now make Australia a food and wool exporter are all non-native (mainly Eurasian) species such as sheep, wheat, and grapes, brought to Australia by overseas colonists.

Today, no scholar would be silly enough to deny that culture, history, and individual choices play a big role in many human phenomena. Scholars don't react to cultural, historical, and individual-agent explanations by denouncing "cultural determinism," "historical determinism," or "individual determinism," and then thinking no further. But many scholars do react to any explanation invoking some geographic role, by denouncing "geographic determinism" . . .

Several reasons may underlie this widespread but nonsensical view. One reason is that some geographic explanations advanced a century ago were racist, thereby causing all geographic explanations to become tainted by racist associations in the minds of many scholars other than geographers. But many genetic, historical, psychological, and anthropological explanations advanced a century ago were also racist, yet the validity of newer non-racist genetic etc. explanations is widely accepted today.

Another reason for reflex rejection of geographic explanations is that historians have a tradition, in their discipline, of stressing the role of contingency (a favorite word among historians) based on individual decisions and chance. Often that view is warranted . . . But often, too, that view is unwarranted. The development of warm fur clothes among the Inuit living north of the Arctic Circle was not because one influential Inuit leader persuaded other Inuit in 1783 to adopt warm fur clothes, for no good environmental reason.

A third reason is that geographic explanations usually depend on detailed technical facts of geography and other fields of scholarship . . . Most historians and economists don't acquire that detailed knowledge as part of the professional training.

Ques 1. All of the following can be inferred from the passage EXCEPT:

1. agricultural practices changed drastically in the Australian continent after it was colonised.
2. individual dictat and contingency were not the causal factors for the use of fur clothing in some very cold climates.
3. while most human phenomena result from culture and individual choice, some have bio-geographic origins.
4. several academic studies of human phenomena in the past involved racist interpretations.

Correct Answer: Option C

Ques 2. All of the following are advanced by the author as reasons why non-geographers disregard geographic influences on human phenomena EXCEPT their:

1. dismissal of explanations that involve geographical causes for human behaviour.
2. belief in the central role of humans, unrelated to physical surroundings, in influencing phenomena.
3. lingering impressions of past geographic analyses that were politically offensive.
4. disciplinary training which typically does not include technical knowledge of geography.

Correct Answer: Option A

Ques 3. The examples of the Inuit and Aboriginal Australians are offered in the passage to show:

1. how environmental factors lead to comparatively divergent paths in livelihoods and development.
2. human resourcefulness across cultures in adapting to their surroundings.
3. how physical circumstances can dictate human behaviour and cultures.
4. that despite geographical isolation, traditional societies were self-sufficient and adaptive.

Correct Answer: Option A

Ques 4. The author criticises scholars who are not geographers for all of the following reasons EXCEPT:

1. their rejection of the role of biogeographic factors in social and cultural phenomena.
2. their outdated interpretations of past cultural and historical phenomena.
3. their labelling of geographic explanations as deterministic.
4. the importance they place on the role of individual decisions when studying human phenomena.

Correct Answer: Option B

Passage 2 (CAT 2022 Slot 2)

We begin with the emergence of the philosophy of the social sciences as an arena of thought and as a set of social institutions. The two characterisations overlap but are not congruent. Academic disciplines are social institutions. . . . My view is that institutions are all those social entities that organise action: they link acting individuals into social structures. There are various kinds of institutions. Hegelians and Marxists emphasise universal institutions such as the family, rituals, governance, economy and the military. These are mostly institutions that just grew. Perhaps in some imaginary beginning of time they spontaneously appeared. In their present incarnations, however, they are very much the product of conscious attempts to mould and plan them. We have family law, established and disestablished churches, constitutions and laws, including those governing the economy and the military. Institutions deriving from statute, like joint-stock companies are formal by contrast with informal ones such as friendships. There are some institutions that come in both informal and formal variants, as well as in mixed ones. Consider the fact that the stock exchange and the black market are both market institutions, one formal one not. Consider further that there are many features of the work of the stock exchange that rely on informal, noncodifiable agreements, not least the language used for communication. To be precise, mixtures are the norm . . . From constitutions at the top to by-laws near the bottom we are always adding to, or tinkering with, earlier institutions, the grown and the designed are intertwined.

It is usual in social thought to treat culture and tradition as different from, although alongside, institutions. The view taken here is different. Culture and tradition are sub-sets of institutions analytically isolated for explanatory or expository purposes. Some social scientists have taken all institutions, even purely local ones, to be entities that satisfy basic human needs - under local conditions . . . Others differed and declared any structure of reciprocal roles and norms an institution. Most of these differences are differences of emphasis rather than disagreements. Let us straddle all these versions and present institutions very generally . . . as structures that serve to coordinate the actions of individuals. . . . Institutions themselves then have no aims or purpose other than those given to them by actors or used by actors to explain them . . .

Language is the formative institution for social life and for science . . . Both formal and informal language is involved, naturally grown or designed. (Language is all of these to varying degrees.) Languages are paradigms of institutions or, from another perspective, nested sets of institutions. Syntax, semantics, lexicon and alphabet/character-set are all institutions within the larger institutional framework of a written language. Natural languages are typical examples of what Ferguson called 'the result of human action, but not the execution of any human design'[;] reformed natural languages and artificial languages introduce design into their modifications or refinements of natural language. Above all, languages are paradigms of institutional tools that function to coordinate.

Ques 1. "Consider the fact that the stock exchange and the black market are both market institutions, one formal one not." Which one of the following statements best explains this quote, in the context of the passage?

1. The stock exchange and the black market are both organised to function by rules.
2. Market instruments can be formally traded in the stock exchange and informally traded in the black market.
3. The stock exchange and the black market are both dependent on the market to survive.
4. The stock exchange and the black market are examples of how, even within the same domain, different kinds of institutions can co-exist.

Correct Answer: Option D

Ques 2. All of the following inferences from the passage are false, EXCEPT:

1. the institution of friendship cannot be found in the institution of joint-stock companies because the first is an informal institution, while the second is a formal one.
2. "natural language" refers to that stage of language development where no conscious human intent is evident in the formation of language.
3. as concepts, "culture" and "tradition" have no analytical, explanatory or expository power, especially when they are treated in isolation.
4. institutions like the family, rituals, governance, economy, and the military are natural and cannot be consciously modified.

Correct Answer: Option B

Ques 3. Which of the following statements best represents the essence of the passage?

1. Institutions are structures that serve to coordinate the actions of individuals.
2. It is usual in social thought to treat culture and tradition as different from institutions.
3. Language is the fundamental formal institution for social life and for science.
4. The stock exchange and the black market are both market institutions.

Correct Answer: Option A

Ques 4. In the first paragraph of the passage, what are the two "characterisations" that are seen as overlapping but not congruent?

1. "the philosophy of the social sciences" and "a set of social institutions".
2. "an arena of thought" and "academic disciplines".
3. "academic disciplines" and "institutions".
4. "individuals" and "social structures".

Correct Answer: Option C

Passege 3 (CAT 2021 Slot 1)

I have elaborated . . . a framework for analyzing the contradictory pulls on [Indian] nationalist ideology in its struggle against the dominance of colonialism and the resolution it offered to those contradictions. Briefly, this resolution was built around a separation of the domain of culture into two spheres—the material and the spiritual. It was in the material sphere that the claims of Western civilization were the most powerful. Science, technology, rational forms of economic organization, modern methods of statecraft—these had given the European countries the strength to subjugate the non-European people . . . To overcome this domination, the colonized people had to learn those superior techniques of organizing material life and incorporate them within their own cultures. . . . But this could not mean the imitation of the West in every aspect of life, for then the very distinction between the West and the East would vanish—the self-identity of national culture would itself be threatened. . . .

The discourse of nationalism shows that the material/spiritual distinction was condensed into an analogous, but ideologically far more powerful, dichotomy: that between the outer and the inner. . . . Applying the inner/outer distinction to the matter of concrete day-to-day living separates the social space into ghar and bahir, the home and the world. The world is the external, the domain of the material; the home represents one's inner spiritual self, one's true identity. The world is a treacherous terrain of the pursuit of material interests, where practical considerations reign supreme. It is also typically the domain of the male. The home in its essence must remain unaffected by the profane activities of the material world—and woman is its representation. And so one gets an identification of social roles by gender to correspond with the separation of the social space into ghar and bahir. . . .

The colonial situation, and the ideological response of nationalism to the critique of Indian tradition, introduced an entirely new substance to [these dichotomies] and effected their transformation. The material/spiritual dichotomy, to which the terms world and home corresponded, had acquired . . . a very special significance in the nationalist mind. The world was where the European power had challenged the non-European peoples and, by virtue of its superior material culture, had subjugated them. But, the nationalists asserted, it had failed to colonize the inner, essential, identity of the East which lay in its distinctive, and superior, spiritual culture. . . . [I]n the entire phase of the national struggle, the crucial need was to protect, preserve and strengthen the inner core of the national culture, its spiritual essence. . . .

Once we match this new meaning of the home/world dichotomy with the identification of social roles by gender, we get the ideological framework within which nationalism answered the women's question. It would be a grave error to see in this, as liberals are apt to in their despair at the many marks of social conservatism in nationalist practice, a total rejection of the West. Quite the contrary: the nationalist paradigm in fact supplied an ideological principle of selection.

Ques 1. Which one of the following, if true, would weaken the author's claims in the passage?

1. Indian nationalists rejected the cause of English education for women during the colonial period.
2. Forces of colonial modernity played an important role in shaping anti-colonial Indian nationalism.
3. The Industrial Revolution played a crucial role in shaping the economic prowess of Britain in the eighteenth century.
4. The colonial period saw the hybridisation of Indian culture in all realms as it came in contact with British/European culture.

Correct Answer: Option D

Ques 2. Which one of the following best describes the liberal perception of Indian nationalism?

1. Indian nationalism embraced the changes brought about by colonialism in Indian women's traditional gender roles.
2. Indian nationalism's sophistication resided in its distinction of the material from the spiritual spheres.
3. Indian nationalist discourses reaffirmed traditional gender roles for Indian women.
4. Indian nationalist discourses provided an ideological principle of selection.

Correct Answer: Option C

Ques 3. On the basis of the information in the passage, all of the following are true about the spiritual/material dichotomy of Indian nationalism EXCEPT that it:

1. represented a continuation of age-old oppositions in Indian culture.
2. constituted the premise of the ghar/bahir dichotomy.
3. helped in safeguarding the identity of Indian nationalism.
4. was not as ideologically powerful as the inner/outer dichotomy.

Correct Answer: Option A

Ques 4. Which one of the following explains the "contradictory pulls" on Indian nationalism?

1. Despite its spiritual superiority, Indian nationalism had to fight against colonial domination.
2. Despite its fight against colonial domination, Indian nationalism had to borrow from the coloniser in the material sphere.
3. Despite its fight against colonial domination, Indian nationalism had to borrow from the coloniser in the spiritual sphere.
4. Despite its scientific and technological inferiority, Indian nationalism had to fight against colonial domination.

Correct Answer: Option B

How to Prepare Reading Comprehension for the CAT Exam

The CAT Exam is the most reputed management entrance exam in the country. It demands dedication, discipline, and an effective preparation strategy. The RC part has maximum weightage so it is extremely important to score well in this section. Here, you can find some tips that should be kept in mind while preparing for CAT Reading Comprehension.

• Develop a habit of reading books, newspapers, and magazines to improve your comprehension skills.
• Enhance your vocabulary to excel in this section. Learn 5-10 new word and their usage daily.
• Solve diverse RC passages to enhance comprehension skills.
• Before diving into the details, quickly scan the passage to understand its structure, main ideas, and any highlighted points.
• Learn to skim for key information while reading comprehensively.

• Solve previous year’s CAT question papers to understand the exam pattern and get familiar with the types of questions asked in the passage. This will also improve your time management skills.

How to Approach Reading Comprehension Questions in the CAT Exam

In the CAT exam, The purpose RC section is to check reading comprehension and analytical skills of the candidates. So it becomes necessary to follow a strategic approach to solve the RC questions.

• Read fast and note down the key points simultaneously to save time.
• Analyse the passage and summarise it in key points.
• Read and understand the question carefully to find your answers quickly and accurately.
• If you stack on any question do not spend too much time on it.
• Read the long passages till the end and do not make assumptions after reading the half passage.