There are many Coaching
Institutes which will teach you speed reading, skimming, scanning
etc… but in the exam situation it is most possible that all these
techniques will not even strike our mind. Therefore, it is
important that we start to regularly read - books, blogs
passages, newspapers,magazines and anything which makes even an
ounce of sense.
Usually, coaching
Institutes never are able to answer questions from verbal
correctly. So, our best bet to start thinking in lines of CAT
would be old CAT question papers only.
There are many methods
suggested for going about the CAT RCs.
Method 1:
1. Go through questions
2. Read passage
3. Answer questions
Advantage : You know what you need to look for
in the passage
Disadvantage :
1. It is possible that you will have concentrated so much on
remembering the questions that you cannot give the passage the
same attention and at the end, you might not have read between
the lines. Mostly, CAT passages aren't direct, so it is important
to keep the whole topic in mind while answering questions.
Method 2:
1. Read Passage
2. Read Questions and Answer Questions
Adv : You get the essence of the passage because
you aren't reading the questions
Disadv : You might need to go through the whole
passage again, several times while answering the questions as you
sometimes need to locate authors/people/dates/phrases etc…
Method 3 : (This
is the method I use and this works towards eliminating the above
disadvantages)
1. Skim through questions for important/striking words.
Here, you shouldn't read the whole question or even try to make
sense of anything in it. Just look for the following in the
questions
- Names
- Places
- Weird/Difficult/Striking words
- Phrases ie., you look for quotes "- " or
'-'
2. Go through passage and underline all the words that seem to
match what you have just read and any other words you find
difficult to comprehend or which you feel might be necessary.
3. Write down the exact topic which each paragraph is talking
about.
4. Write in big letters the main objective of the whole
paragraph.
4. Go through the questions and answer the questions.
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Post Comments
chandra_avinash said – Mon, 22 Jun 2009 18:22:41 -0000 ( Flag Edit Link )
it’s a little time consuming, but once you get the hang of it, the upsides are tremendous;
basically you have 2 options:
1. read till your average speed is 900 words per minute
2. spend a month to get the hang of skimming and other techniques, and get an edge over the competition
i guess, for most people, option #2 is more acceptable