The CAT or Common Admission Test 2009 is approaching fast. This year it will be conducted from November 28 (Saturday) to December 7 (Monday). With less than a month to go, it is now time for a reality check on your preparation level. Have you been reading and working on your grammar, vocabulary and sentence structure?
Will you be able to find an assumption hidden in the author's idea? How do you know what is implied in the passage? Can you logically complete a paragraph in the given time?
Do you know the difference between words that sound similar? And do they make sense in a sentence? Also, now that CAT is a computer-based test (CBT), will you get less or more time to answer questions?
How do you address these problems? Here are some suggestions to help you up your verbal score.
Sangeetha Sashidharan is an independent education consultant, with 12 years of experience in the field of training for various entrance examinations such as CAT, GRE, GMAT, TOEFL, IELTS and SAT.
Careers360 is a complete careers magazine.
During the test
Here are some quick tips to help you absorb information, faster and more precisely.
This way, you may be able to answer all questions without reading the passage again.
When you are through with reading, you must be in a position to answer the following questions without referring to the passage:
Jumbled sentences have always been a favourite. Fact and Inference Judgment questions popped up in a difficult avatar a few years ago.
Syllogisms, once popular, are pretty easy to solve and you will be lucky if they appear in CAT 2009. The section 'Complete the idea or paragraph' tests your ability to understand the flow of logic. Heed these tips to improve your reasoning score.
The new format
Log on to the CAT web site (www.catiim.in), and take a tutorial for the computer-based test format. During the test, you can mark questions that you wish to answer a little later. You will be more comfortable when you understand how the RC passages appear. As the format of CAT has changed you should practise reading passages on a computer screen. Now, test your reading speed vis-a-vis a hardcopy test.
Good luck!