Strategy to crack Reading Comprehension in CAT Verbal Ability

Any serious discussion of reading must confront the problem that reading means different things to different people. It includes different levels as listed below:

1. Decoding words and determining their meaning in a particular sentence

2. Combining meanings of individual words into a complete understanding of the sentence

3. Understanding of the paragraph and its implied main idea, as well as cause-and-effect, hypothesis-proof, implications, unstated conclusions, and ideas associated with but tangential to the main idea of a paragraph

4. Evaluation of ideas, including questions of logic, proof, authenticity, and value judgments

The first two levels represent basic reading skills in which a developing reader gains increasing automaticity. The last two levels represent reasoning and what has traditionally been referred to as reading comprehension.

The Common Admission Test focuses on levels 3 and 4. And scoring well in Reading Comprehension segment in CAT is dependent on the following skills:

1. Reading Speed

2. Reading Comprehension

3. Analytical Ability

4. Reading Range

5. Memory

6. Question Identification

We have discussed these elements in detail across the three notes on Reading Comprehension.

Once you finish going through the entire series of three notes you will realize that all these skills are inter related. So, you cannot and should not feel confident merely because you have mastered two or three of these skills. Now, let us look at these skill-elements one-by-one in detail.

Reading Speed

Most of the college-studying candidates preparing for CAT have reading rate between approximately around 100 to 200 words per minute. In order to answer RC questions a student needs to read at the rate of approximately 600 to 700 words. The below average reader is hindered in his reading by a number of factors. These include sub-vocalization, finger pointing, regression and back skipping. These are not problem areas but merely habits picked over the years. The student needs to be aware of her unique hindering habit and work consciously towards removing it.

Another factor that must be kept in mind is that while answering an RC question, the student is not expected to memorize each and every word/sentence given in the passage. One must have the ability to instinctively make out the main idea given in the passage and not waste time reading material that is peripheral. And instinct comes about by means of constant reading across various themes.