How are you all doing?
Well if you are doing fine then it is good because it puts you in a situation where you are dealing with short term targets that I mentioned in my last post.Contrary to this you could also have become oblivious to the fact that CAT 2013 is no child's play and your 3-4 study hours per week will not help you to crack the top 7 MBA colleges (well if you have your 10th and 12th to make up for your low CAT percentile , good for you).
Alright! So coming back to my promise of a blog to help you all out with Reading Comprehensions.First of all , whatever I write in this regard will be a mere personal experience so donot take it as any success mantra.Second, If I am writing down something , believe me it will help.
Now the big question- How to decode THE RCs?
Let us start with some questions:
Do you like reading the passages?
Do you read novels on a regular basis?
Do you read newspaper ( not just the sports and glamour sections)?
Do you read blogs or articles on a regular basis?
Can you concentrate on anything for minimum 5 minutes?
Well, if you have any question in your favour from the ones I have asked, you are good to go with RCs. You just need to do some of the following tasks:
1)Read Different kind of articles , books , passages which should have a diversification among themselves.for example pick up editorials from THE GUARDIAN , THE NEW YORK TIMES . These Editorials should be from the field of economics , politics , social sciences etc.
2) If you enjoy reading then atleast for CAT , read only till there where you understand and as soon as you find something perplex , STOP , read again , try to read between the lines.Give it a thought.This will actually help you in building your understanding of different perceptions and different styles of writing.
3)Try sloving 3-4 RCs in one go , in a given amount of time(say 22-24 minutes for 4 RCs). This helps you get over your fatigue.Many people enjoy reading or can read passages but their fatigue makes them succumb under pressure.Though RCs are not governed by "the more you practice the more you will master them", yet practice helps you in being comfortable with them .
4) Pick up more and more RCs which have questions that are inference based because these are the toughest!( In the starting donot solve them in a time bound manner, start doing it only towards the end of June).To understand the theme of the passage you might have to read the RC twice or thrice. Do that.Remember it is a learning stage and not a competing stage.You can be easy on time untill you are making an effort to understand.
CAUTION:
The last point is a tested formula but it might not be helpful to everyone and only the one who is making a genuine effort to improve will be able to gain benefit out of it.So be careful while relying on this heavily.
5)Try and make your own RC.YES , YOU READ IT RIGHT!!!. pick up any newspaper articles or any other article you find and try and make questions based on your reading.MAKE SURE you include 2 inference based question in the four necessary question you make per RC.After framing the questions, you will have to frame the options also, out of which 4 should be incorrect and 1 correct.If you really want to help yourself try and make the options as close as possible and not as vague as anyone can guess.Once you do this , you will get an idea as to how an examiner thinks while framing the options, how he knows that there are 2 options which can never be easily negated to get one final answer etc.
NOW MY FRIENDS TO WHOM ENGLISH IS A BATTLEGROUND IN ITSELF
Friends, please undersatnd CAT is not testing your strengths , it is testing how you fare in your weakness and english is not a HERCULEAN task, it is a language which has been made easier to decode and decipher by CAT's emphasis on logic more than vocabulary. You just have to be honest in your attemot to master your weakness and you will see RCs is the only part in the entire exam where you are a bit relaxed and you get to solve 3-4 questions by just extracting information from the passage. No prior knowledge/formulas required.If you speak in your native language and you do it effortlessly then the best way to start is try reading sentences of english(in passages) and translate them in your native language.This practice will help you understand the passage better.Start from today and try doing it with the next 5-6 passages you solve.You will see an improvemnet.
Now coming to your 'to do' steps.Please understand , you will have to develop understanding of the language. You will have to read certain different kind of authors to make yourself understand how an author conveys to his/her readers what is going on in his / her mind.Philosophy haunts many , particularly because they are from engineering background or they are looking at MBa from just the monetary perspective.Let me tell you one thing , logic can make you clear the entrance and fetch you a call but only deep thinking makes you outshine in the crowd of 1000's when it comes to the interviews, discussions and essays.If and when you go to a B school you will seldom realise that your comrades are all thought leaders and to outdo them you will have to be one also.
So all of you who have been shying away from reading , I donot intend to ask you to start reading the editorials of newspaper ( which can benefit you immensely) but you can atleast start with some very small novels which will be difficult to understand as they will have layers of thoughts and conclusions but if you master them , you will master CAT.
Here is what you have to do. You have to read the following 8-9 novels(very small in length) and you have to write the summary of the same as soon as you finish reading them ( The summary can be of 200-250 words).Once you write the summary , go on the internet and read the summaries written by others and see how close you got . This will help in building your understanding from the CORE and you will see yourself move in leaps and bounds.
THE NOVELS:
Animal Farm: George Orwell
The Metamorphosis: Franz Kafka
In the Penal Colony:Franz Kafka
Nine Stories: J.D Salinger
The Dead: James Joyce
The Invisible Man: H.G Wells
The Great Gatsby:Scott Fitzgerald
The Man who would be king:Rudyard Kipling
Poems and Short stories of Rabindra Nath Tagore
Once you have completed this set of novels you are free to read more novels of these authors and try to atleast complete reading one novel every 10-12 days till CAT.
After you have done reading this set of novels you should start followng the steps 1 to 5 that I have mentioned above for those who are already regular with reading books,newspaper, articles etc.
YOU HAVE TO FOLLOW THOSE FIVE STEPS BUT ONLY AFTER YOU HAVE DONE WHAT I HAVE ASKED YOU TO DO FIRST.
Well if you are doing fine then it is good because it puts you in a situation where you are dealing with short term targets that I mentioned in my last post.Contrary to this you could also have become oblivious to the fact that CAT 2013 is no child's play and your 3-4 study hours per week will not help you to crack the top 7 MBA colleges (well if you have your 10th and 12th to make up for your low CAT percentile , good for you).
Alright! So coming back to my promise of a blog to help you all out with Reading Comprehensions.First of all , whatever I write in this regard will be a mere personal experience so donot take it as any success mantra.Second, If I am writing down something , believe me it will help.
Now the big question- How to decode THE RCs?
Let us start with some questions:
Do you like reading the passages?
Do you read novels on a regular basis?
Do you read newspaper ( not just the sports and glamour sections)?
Do you read blogs or articles on a regular basis?
Can you concentrate on anything for minimum 5 minutes?
Well, if you have any question in your favour from the ones I have asked, you are good to go with RCs. You just need to do some of the following tasks:
1)Read Different kind of articles , books , passages which should have a diversification among themselves.for example pick up editorials from THE GUARDIAN , THE NEW YORK TIMES . These Editorials should be from the field of economics , politics , social sciences etc.
2) If you enjoy reading then atleast for CAT , read only till there where you understand and as soon as you find something perplex , STOP , read again , try to read between the lines.Give it a thought.This will actually help you in building your understanding of different perceptions and different styles of writing.
3)Try sloving 3-4 RCs in one go , in a given amount of time(say 22-24 minutes for 4 RCs). This helps you get over your fatigue.Many people enjoy reading or can read passages but their fatigue makes them succumb under pressure.Though RCs are not governed by "the more you practice the more you will master them", yet practice helps you in being comfortable with them .
4) Pick up more and more RCs which have questions that are inference based because these are the toughest!( In the starting donot solve them in a time bound manner, start doing it only towards the end of June).To understand the theme of the passage you might have to read the RC twice or thrice. Do that.Remember it is a learning stage and not a competing stage.You can be easy on time untill you are making an effort to understand.
CAUTION:
The last point is a tested formula but it might not be helpful to everyone and only the one who is making a genuine effort to improve will be able to gain benefit out of it.So be careful while relying on this heavily.
5)Try and make your own RC.YES , YOU READ IT RIGHT!!!. pick up any newspaper articles or any other article you find and try and make questions based on your reading.MAKE SURE you include 2 inference based question in the four necessary question you make per RC.After framing the questions, you will have to frame the options also, out of which 4 should be incorrect and 1 correct.If you really want to help yourself try and make the options as close as possible and not as vague as anyone can guess.Once you do this , you will get an idea as to how an examiner thinks while framing the options, how he knows that there are 2 options which can never be easily negated to get one final answer etc.
NOW MY FRIENDS TO WHOM ENGLISH IS A BATTLEGROUND IN ITSELF
Friends, please undersatnd CAT is not testing your strengths , it is testing how you fare in your weakness and english is not a HERCULEAN task, it is a language which has been made easier to decode and decipher by CAT's emphasis on logic more than vocabulary. You just have to be honest in your attemot to master your weakness and you will see RCs is the only part in the entire exam where you are a bit relaxed and you get to solve 3-4 questions by just extracting information from the passage. No prior knowledge/formulas required.If you speak in your native language and you do it effortlessly then the best way to start is try reading sentences of english(in passages) and translate them in your native language.This practice will help you understand the passage better.Start from today and try doing it with the next 5-6 passages you solve.You will see an improvemnet.
Now coming to your 'to do' steps.Please understand , you will have to develop understanding of the language. You will have to read certain different kind of authors to make yourself understand how an author conveys to his/her readers what is going on in his / her mind.Philosophy haunts many , particularly because they are from engineering background or they are looking at MBa from just the monetary perspective.Let me tell you one thing , logic can make you clear the entrance and fetch you a call but only deep thinking makes you outshine in the crowd of 1000's when it comes to the interviews, discussions and essays.If and when you go to a B school you will seldom realise that your comrades are all thought leaders and to outdo them you will have to be one also.
So all of you who have been shying away from reading , I donot intend to ask you to start reading the editorials of newspaper ( which can benefit you immensely) but you can atleast start with some very small novels which will be difficult to understand as they will have layers of thoughts and conclusions but if you master them , you will master CAT.
Here is what you have to do. You have to read the following 8-9 novels(very small in length) and you have to write the summary of the same as soon as you finish reading them ( The summary can be of 200-250 words).Once you write the summary , go on the internet and read the summaries written by others and see how close you got . This will help in building your understanding from the CORE and you will see yourself move in leaps and bounds.
THE NOVELS:
Animal Farm: George Orwell
The Metamorphosis: Franz Kafka
In the Penal Colony:Franz Kafka
Nine Stories: J.D Salinger
The Dead: James Joyce
The Invisible Man: H.G Wells
The Great Gatsby:Scott Fitzgerald
The Man who would be king:Rudyard Kipling
Poems and Short stories of Rabindra Nath Tagore
Once you have completed this set of novels you are free to read more novels of these authors and try to atleast complete reading one novel every 10-12 days till CAT.
After you have done reading this set of novels you should start followng the steps 1 to 5 that I have mentioned above for those who are already regular with reading books,newspaper, articles etc.
YOU HAVE TO FOLLOW THOSE FIVE STEPS BUT ONLY AFTER YOU HAVE DONE WHAT I HAVE ASKED YOU TO DO FIRST.
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