The purpose of reading a comprehension is to understand author’s interpretation and its meaning that he is conveying through the passage. As a reader, you need to connect the meaning of the first sentence to the following passages in order to understand the underlying meaning of the whole passage.
Students have dealt with passages all their lives, and the level keeps increasing with every passing examination until they reach their ultimate level. For Business Administration students in India, it’s the CAT (Common Admission Test) exam. In this article, I am going to discuss on how to tackle the toughest comprehensions in exams.
I am sure that when you came across with CAT’s comprehensive passage for the first time you might have given a thought that is it authored by Shakespeare. It is for sure that the level of vocabulary used in CAT comprehensive passages is at its utmost, and half of the content goes above the head. One thing you must have observed for sure is that none of the CAT comprehensive passages are biased towards the subject. i.e. It is written in complete passive tone.
Here are the few things to consider when dealing with CAT comprehensive passages:
1. The passage is completely written in passive tone, to which it is difficult to determine biasness of the author. It is important for the reader to understand where the author is trying to mend the whole paragraph towards. First thing out of reading passage we have to do is to make a small conclusion of the paragraph.
2. Most of the vocabs will be very non-relatable, to which it is important to sharpen the knife prior itself. As per my findings on going through most of the passages. I have found that most of the articles use vocabulary of seventeenth or Eighteenth century, which makes the content look a bit un-relatable.
It would be better to start extracting thesaurus of seventeenth and eighteenth century once. The best way to start is to imply five new words in your regular conversation, and use every word at least three times. If we see the math here, you are learning 5 new words everyday (considering you start preparing six months prior the test), you have already added 900 plus words in your thesaurus.
3. Another vital tip is to refer authors who use the highest levels of vocabularies. Some of the renowned authors in this field are James Joyce, Vladimir Nabokov, Thomas Pynchon and more.
Speaking about James Joyce, his book “Ulysses” itself has more than 30,000 unique words. On the other hand, Thomas Pynchon has a unique way of writing that involves a lot of brain Power, it is quite evident in his famous book “Mason & Dixon”.
Finally, I would like to conclude my article on three key points:
• Keep upgrading your Vocabulary. Vocabularies are one of the biggest challenges in understanding passages.
• Don’t tend to lose the habit of reading. By reading more you will have a better understanding and interpretation of different authors.
• Always draw a small bias conclusion about the passage, which helps in answering questions in a direction.
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