How to prepare for verbal and reading comprehension?

Read! Read! Read! To ace the RC section of CAT, you need to spend an hour on an average everyday reading. Good comprehension comes from reading with a relaxed mind, one that is receptive to new ideas. Good comprehension comes from engaging with the author: understanding not just what he says, but why he says it and how he feels about it. Take your time to read the passage, say 8-10 minutes. This will be time well spent if you involve yourself while reading.

Good comprehension comes from the ability to make connections with what you already know. So, read a wide range of subjects - politics, science, economics, philosophy, culture - so that you get comfortable with these topics and don't balk when you see a passage that relates to a topic you don't know much about.



Good comprehension comes from paying attention to detail. Skimming/speed reading is similar to highlighting text with colored markers in books. You can do a lot of it without understanding or remembering a word. It just gives you something to do. The anxiety to read at a high speed only pulls down comprehension. Skimming has its uses, but CAT RC is not the place where you should use it.



To start with you can read books by these authors: Sidney Sheldon, Jeffrey Archer, John Grisham, Agatha Christie, Mario Puzo, Salman Rushdie, Aravind Adiga and many others. You can also start with newspapers including TOI, ET, Indian Express, The Hindu, HT etc.

See you have lots of time to improve your verbal and Readind Comprehension section. For Verbal Ability you need to start reading lots of good books written by good authors like Charles Dickens, Agastha Christie, Sydney Sheldon etc. Reading these novels will increase your command on the language. Along with these also read newspapers like Hindu which will not only help you in improving your language but will also keep you updated with the news all around the world. Along with this start attempting different types of questions asked in the paper like omission exercise, editing, choose the incorrect word, Jumbling exercise etc.



Along with this start memorizing 5 new words daily with their meaning and correct pronounciation and use them in your daily conversations so that you can remember them in a better way.



For RC section start reading lots of passages, bligs and viewpoints by different authors on internet, magazines and newspapers. In these passages try to figure out the tone of the author, the way he wants to communicate with the reader, what message he actually wants to deliver through his write up and what are the inferences he made in order to justify his thought. Message part may or may not be present in the passages asked in the exam so make sure you try to interpret by yourself. If you will be able to do all this in a better way then you will find yourself comfortable in most of the questions asked below passage.



At last not only for your verbal section but for the whole exam preparations make sure that you strengthen your basics before moving for higher level questions and regularly attempt online mock test and analyse their solutions which will help you in overcoming your mistakes and come up with a strategy to attempt your paper which will definitely help you in improving your marks and percentile.



All the best for your preparations!!

Firstly, you need to be well versed with all latest newspapers like Economic times and Times of India to get a good grasp of verbal comprehension and fluency. Secondly, it is advisable to join reputed coaching institute like TIME, CPLC, CATKing which are best in training and give you significant practice in mock tests.You should refer to notes by RS agarwal for beginner level problems and then followed by notes from TIME coaching institute.
Ample of mock exams are requireed such that your error rate minimizes and you score well.