How To Improve CAT Verbal Ability: Check Important Questions and Preparation Tips

Verbal Ability section forms a major part of the CAT question paper. It is the first section of the paper and sets the mood for the rest. Good performance in this section is a necessity for a high overall CAT percentile. Get tips to improve Verbal Ability for CAT 2025.

CAT Verbal Ability cannot be mastered in a short time. There has to be long-term plan, proper guidance and proper timeline for achieving the desired result. Thus, the best option is to start early. Most importantly, one needs to develop the habit of reading. Verbal Section of CAT includes para jumbles, odd sentence and para inference. All the questions of these topics are comprehension based so one needs to develop reading practice from early on. To crack the Verbal Ability section of CAT 2025, understand 'why' and 'what' of it. In this article we shall broadly try and understand what purpose does Verbal section of the CAT question paper serve and how can we score well in it. 

CAT Verbal Ability Preparation: What to read?

Since management schools want us to become good business leaders they dish out stuff that an MBA graduate is most likely to read. However, due to exam constraints the passages in the exam are often excerpts of a bigger and wider article. These articles typically deal with economic, social, political etc. issues and the impact of these issues on the intended reader.

However, it is much better to start off and read articles longer (about 5,000 words) than the ones that appear in the exam (about 400 words). A complete article has a proper structure unlike those in the CAT exam. However, it is important to figure out how excellent English is written.

Also, while reading in English we should make a conscious effort to start thinking in English as well, since this can be a handicap for many of us who come from vernacular schools.

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CAT Verbal Ability Preparation: How to read?

Upon reading an article it is important to discuss it with friends who have read it. You should make sure that all the implicit opinions/arguments are talked about and not missed. Often at the face of it the article seems straightforward but we fail to locate the point the author is trying to make. Correctly filtering the facts from the author's opinions help get an insight into the article.

Similarly, it is important to understand how arguments are built by good writers and what is an expected line of thought in the passage. This understanding can be developed by discussing the passage with friends who have read it.

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CAT Verbal Ability Preparation: Learn vocabulary

While learning words organically (through essays and articles) is an excellent option, with the view of preparing for the CAT exam - it makes sense to parallelly learn the less commonly used words. Many students praise the virtues of books like Word Power Made Easy for improving vocabulary. These books help students derive the meaning of a word from its root and other techniques. However in case of extreme time crunch, it is best to pick up a standard word list provided by books for GRE, TOEFL, etc. and attempt learning them by rote. Whenever a new word is learnt, try using it in a sentence.

Also Read:

• Reading Comprehension preparation tips
• Verbal Ability preparation tips
• Pronouns with exercises
• Parajumbles with exercises
• Prepositions with exercises

CAT Verbal Ability Preparation: Practice Sample Questions

The Verbal Ability section of CAT calls for a lot of practice, which should be duly done in the last few months before the exam. The scores in the Reading Comprehension section get tremendously boosted with practice followed by analysis of the questions attempted correctly and incorrectly. The associated explanation to an answer is very important since it shows what the examiner thought was the correct answer, why and how it was different from what we thought. While answering subsequent RCs, we should be mindful not to repeat earlier mistakes.

For questions in the vocabulary section of CAT exam, it is important to also know why the incorrect answers were incorrect. In case, the options to a question throws up a new word make it a point to check the word up in the dictionary.

Scoring in Verbal Ability section of CAT exam can be elevated by sincere efforts towards improving the language followed by extensive practice. It is very difficult to score well unless a person has good command over English as a language. Similarly, it is very easy to make many mistakes in case a person is over reliant on his/her English skills without the requisite practice.

Every person should try and modify the approach for suitability while remembering the above skills at the back of his mind.