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VERBAL SECTION

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Being in touch with competitive tests like - CAT, GMAT, etc. From last 4-5 years, my experience says:

When you talk about CAT, One of the most Often repeated question that is asked by students is:-

"How can I improve my Scores in Verbal Section?"

The answer to this question depends on two facts:

1. The abilities of different levels of students
   
2. Time available to develop scores.

Before going any further, lets do little ice-breaking to our clearance relate to Verbal Section. The most commonly asked questions in VA and RC topics can be divided into:

• Questions testing paragraph level skills: Appropriate word usage questions, facts inference judgment questions and grammatical error questions come under this category

• Questions testing Passage level skills: This comprises mainly of reading comprehension.

It's evident from the above mentioned question types that each of these question types concentrates on testing the aspirant on his/her ability to understand sentences, paragraphs and passages.

Needless to say,no matter how good or bad your Verbal reasoning might be, your focus of preparation has to be on trying to improve your ability to grasp the meanings of sentences, paragraphs and passages on a variety of topics.

Before we start to look at the specific requirements for Verbal Section, we first need to understand the most basic problem for CAT aspirants in the Verbal Section. If you were to ask test takers about how many questions they attempted correctly in test, most of them would be unable to answer.And the things become even absurd when they would be unable to recall the exact number of questions they attempted in Verbal section particularly.

This lack of awareness has much wider impact than many of us assume.This becomes the biggest hurdle for most students in improving their scores. Besides, it also results in creation of huge amounts of uncertainty in minds of test takers and they are not able to realize whether they have done enough in this section. Test takers carry over of this uncertainty to other sections,results in an overlap drop in confidence and ultimately reflects in scores So,any attempt at improving this your scores in VA and RC has to necessarily work on this issue.

Coming back to the main topic, Time available to develop scores is as important as an individual's ability. The strategies and exercises are totally different in short time span than that of in longer spans. This lesson will focus more on Short term techniques as CAT is less than two months away.

Best short term method to improve your language test scores is to become aware of the error types that occur while you solve different question types. It is only then that you will be able to identify the specific thought error that you are committing and only after identification of the same can you work to remove it.

STEPS TO IMPROVE

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The following process if adopted thoroughly has the potential to help you remove the repetitive errors that you are making and hence develop your test scores.

STEP # 1

Solve an exercise with or without time constraint. While doing this be sure to work on one type of question at a time.

Note: Make sure you are comfortable and in good mood to study. Your attitude towards Verbal Section should be positive and voracious.

STEP # 2

Once you are done with the exercise, without looking at the solutions, go back to every answer that you have marked. Evaluate the logic of each answer and based on your confidence in the logic you have used in marking the answer, mark each answer as:

1. Definitely correct
2. Probably correct
3. Probably wrong
4. Definitely wrong
   
   
   

   STEP # 3

   
   Check your answers and find out your scores for each answer type as specified above.
   
   
   

   STEP # 4

   
   Analyse your errors based on the following error types.
   
   
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     Error Type # 1: Definitely correct gone wrong:This error type is the most saddening one as it attacks directly on confidence.You miss out the specific logic while solving the problem as well as while making your answer as definitely correct.

     Note: You shouldn't take it as a big deal and should work on the problem to figure out and you can take my word on the fact that you will not miss this topic again, if worked out sincerely.

     
     
     
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     Error Type # 2: Probably correct gone wrong: Focus will be still on the same areas that you will be working for the Error # 1

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     Error Type # 3: Probably correct gone right: The error is as bad as Error # 2. The focus should be on :-

     
     

     Why were you not able to eliminate the incorrect options completely.
     
     This doesn't mean you shouldn't use smart guesses but for practice it should be avoided.
     Note: Remember,this is this problem we are trying to solve.

   • 

     Error Type # 4: Probably wrong gone right:
     What made you think that the incorrect option was right, at the first go?
     
     
     

     • Are you not clear with the topic on which problem is based upon?

     • Weren't you seriously thinking while attempting test?

     
     

     This problem can be called inconsistent thinking or lack of self confidence.

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     Error Type # 5: Probably wrong gone wrong: Question is still the same as the questions with Error # 4.
     Focus should be on - " Why were you not able to spot the strength of the specific logic that supported the correct option.

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     Error Type # 6: Definitely wrong gone wrong:This error simply shows lack of thinking work while solving the problem or in some cases, you were not able to apply the correct logic (that you were knowing) at the right time.
     

     You would mark a question as definitely wrong, only and only if you had somehow realised that the original logic you had used was incorrect. In such a case, you need to ask yourself a simple question:
     
     Why were you not able to spot the correct answer while solving the question for the first time?
     

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     Error Type # 7: Definitely wrong gone right: You should have been able to identify the question as definitely right. Only goes to show that you never got a hang of the specific question, or better say topic. In such a case, you need to identify the logical oversight that occurred during your analysis of the question that made you mark answer as definitely wrong instead of definitely correct.
     
     

   
   

   In case you are unable to solve a specific question in Verbal Section, it means that the level of doubt inserted inside the question is beating you. Hence, you should focus on Simple lessons on those particular topics.

   
   

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   Practice makes a man perfect and Writing makes him Exact.

   Source: CL News-letter and Article by A. Sharma in E.Times.

   
   

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