How to Prepare for VARC with EduRev | Verbal Ability (VA) & Reading Comprehension (RC) - CAT PDF Download

The purpose of EduRev making this document is to help you understand how to study VARC as a subject for not just CAT but also other B School entrances like SNAP, XAT, NMAT, etc and By the end of this document, you will have clarity on how to tackle the VARC section.

Given below are the major tips from experts and toppers which can be checked by candidates who are preparing for CAT. These are the major strategies that, if followed will give fruitful results in CAT:

Step 0: Regular Habits that you should Adopt before Starting Preparation

Few habits that will help you in acing this portion of the exam are:

• Reading Newspapers and Novels: Reading a lot in terms of quality and quantity is important. If your brain is habituated to picking up fresh topics effortlessly, you will get rid of the shock factor when you start reading a passage. Reading newspapers and novels increases your knowledge bandwidth.
  Note: If you’re short on time for preparing, novels might not be the best idea at the moment.
• Improve Grammar: It is crucial for you to be fully aware of the fundamental rules of grammar since they guide you through most of the questions of Verbal Ability. To hone your grammatical skills, check out the notes and tests on this link.
• Increase Vocabulary: Make flashcards of unfamiliar words that you find and inculcate those words into daily conversations. This will help you remember their meaning and usage of the words. You can also improve your vocabulary through EduRev by clicking on this link.

Step 1: Decode the Exam Pattern & Syllabus

For the past few years, however, the VARC syllabus of the CAT focuses on 4 major topics:

• Reading Comprehensions: Most of this section is made of Reading Comprehension. Usually, 4  passages are seen in this section every year and each passage contains 4 questions. 
• Para Jumbles: There are 2 types of Para jumbles that are generally tested in the CAT Exam and are a part of the CAT Syllabus. The normal Para jumbles which are multiple-choice and the Subjective Para jumbles where the answer needs to be filled in.
• Para Summary: While there are other topics that have been tested in the CAT Exam, the Para summary topic is tested practically every year and is, therefore, an immovable part of the CAT Syllabus.
• Odd Sentence Out: They are a recent addition to the CAT verbal ability section. It is very similar to para jumbles. The only difference is that in para jumbles you are asked to arrange the sentences to form a coherent paragraph, whereas in odd sentences you are asked to find the sentence that is not a part of the paragraph, thus the name odd one out.

CAT Syllabus: There's no defined syllabus of CAT but EduRev team has done exhaustive research from previous year papers & best books recommended by the toppers and have compiled the detailed CAT syllabus, you can check the syllabus here.

Step 2: Anlyse the difficulties that you usually face in VARC Section

Here are few of the difficulties that you might face while attempting VARC section:

• Difficulty in concentration throughout the RCs.
• Many answers that one presumes to be correct actually turn out to be wrong.
• Confusion about attempting the question or leaving the question in case you have eliminated two options.
• Inability to connect different sentences in the VA section.
• Managing time to attempt the questions.
  Example: many times students read the RC but are not able to answer the questions due to time constraints.

Step 3: How to study RC and VA?

There are two types of questions asked in the VARC section of the CAT exam:

• MCQs (Multiple-Choice Questions)
• Non-MCQs / TITA (Type-In The Answer)

(A) Strategies to Score High in RC Passage

• Reading: Read Newspaper Editorials and Articles regularly.
• Time Management: Monitor your time to attempt the CAT RC passages. One RC passage followed by 5-6 questions should not take more than 15 minutes to answer.
• Practice RC: Choose an English RC passage source like RC course on EduRev that contains a variety of English Reading Comprehension passages with questions and answers and practice on a variety of questions.
• Review Answers: After going through the English Reading Comprehension passage with questions visualize the answers.
• Central Idea of the Passage: Draw inferences from the RC passage about its contents and understand and identify the Central Idea (main thought) of the RC passage. Most RCs reveal their central theme within the first two paragraphs. So, you shouldn't distribute your time uniformly across all the paragraphs of the passage, instead of when you start reading a passage try slow-reading to get the theme of the passage as quickly as possible. Once you get the theme, pace up the reading of the subsequent paragraphs.
• Analyse already given answers in passage: Understand the Questions based on the RC passage and recognize the directly or indirectly used answer in the RC Passage after identifying the Tone, situations mood, Purpose of the Reading Comprehension Passage.
• Words like 'always, never, definitely' are extremes and are often cues to a wrong option. Always look out for such words to improve your accuracy rate.
• To practice effectively for the RC section, click here.

  

(B) Strategies to Solve Questions in Verbal Ability

• Forming a link of two sentences helps in odd one out questions and then, it is a matter of checking for 4 combinations (say AB is the link that you know of, the order could either be CAB, ABC, DAB, ABD).
• Data and logic Section is very important section if anyone scores good in this then it is good for his score. 
• Paragraph jumble, paragraph summary and odd one out are very important.
• For Paragraph Summary questions, a couple of options will contradict the paragraph in a few cases. It will help if you try to figure out what one statement has that the other doesn’t.
• The best way to go about these questions is to simply mark the order you think makes the most sense and move ahead without spending a lot of time on each question (1.5 to 2 minutes is sufficient in most cases).

Cover all the major topics of Verbal Ability in great depth from here.

3.1. Learn from the detailed Videos lectures and Notes on EduRev

• You should refer to a single source of notes & video lectures that will help you to strengthen the concepts and understand the same topic from a different perspective. 
• This will give you a fair idea of the Verbal Ability and Reading Comprehension section and will help you to keep things in mind for a longer period of time.
• Regular revisions through notes and video lectures can help strengthen the basics and boost one’s confidence in the subject. You can get topic-wise notes & video lectures in the Verbal Ability and Reading Comprehension on EduRev, available at this link
• However, if you're a beginner & think that you need to work on your basic grammar skills and have ample amount of time for the same, we recommend studying the basics through this Grammar section for the CAT VARC course on EduRev.

3.2. Practice topic wise tests 

• Once the conceptual clarity of each topic is there, you must start practicing and solving more and more questions, especially related to Reading Comprehension.
• You can prepare these topics by giving topic-wise tests for Verbal Analogies, Idioms and Phrases, Completing Statements, and Spotting Errors on EduRev
• Once you have completed the basic levels of preparation, attempting tests that are planned level-wise will help you in sharpening your concepts.
• EduRev provides you with topic-wise tests of every topic to boost your preparation. You can also mark questions for review and get back to them later. 
• An analysis report is created at the end of each exam, which not only tells you all the questions you attempted right and wrong, but it also compares the time taken by you to attempt each question with the average time taken by other students. This analysis helps you not only improve your accuracy but also your speed, which is equally important in CAT. You can also see your progress in a particular area by applying a course and time filter.
• You can improve your practice of these topics by giving sectional tests and it will be helpful in maintaining sectional time too.
• With our bifurcation of easy, medium and hard questions, you can easily get to know how good you are in each topic, and how much more you have to improve. This helps in narrowing down the revision topics and ensures that your time is spent wisely.
• The probability of success increases with the revision of concepts. There is no topper of CAT who aced the exam without revising the concepts.
• During revision you can also make use of our dynamic tests to attempt questions of a particular level of difficulty, this feature allows you to create a test for yourself, you can select the number of questions, the topic, the time, and the level of difficulty.
• After complete preparation for at least one time, you can give mock tests also.

Step 4: Practice Mock Tests and PYQs

• Mocks and sample tests could do wonders in RC preparation for CAT. This fact has been tested by the CAT toppers over a period of time. The more the number of Mocks, the more you will be skilful in the RC section.
• During the mocks, most candidates attempt either in the range of 10-15 or in the range of 25-30 questions. Let us judge the two scenarios. If you aim to focus on the accuracy rate and keep your attempts between 10-15, then in the best-case scenario, you can score a maximum of 37-45 marks (90-100% accuracy). On the other hand, if you aim to focus on the attempt rate and keep your attempts between 25-30, then even in the worst-case scenario (70-80% accuracy), you can score a minimum of 43-55 marks. Hence, it would be beneficial to focus on increasing the number of attempts and then move on to improving your accuracy rate.
• Make it a habit of giving at least one sectional mock before sleeping every night and analyzing it the next day. 
• Maximize your attempts gradually in the sectionals by focusing more on RC's ( in the order - RC >  Summary > Odd one out > PJ's/ last sentence).

• To practice VARC Mock Tests from the EduRev platform, Click here 
• You can get the last 10-years of CAT exam from here: Previous Year Papers (PYQs).
• You can also refer to the past years' questions of VARC from the CAT, XAT, and SNAP here.

Other Important Links

1. Overall Understanding of Exam: 

Check out these documents and prepare your strategy for CAT accordingly.

• CAT Syllabus, Important topics & Changing trends of Exam
• Details about the CAT exam (Eligibility, Exam Pattern, Syllabus)
• How to attempt CAT on D-Day
• How to Prepare for CAT with EduRev
• FAQs about CAT Exam

2. Check out Subject- Wise Strategies 

• How to Prepare for Quant with EduRev
• How to Prepare for DILR with EduRev

Happy Learning with EduRev!