Preparing for the CAT verbal section: An Intuitive approach

I had long thought of writing this article. But in wake of very good and useful sites like Pagalguy.com around, I always dithered. Today, as some of the days when my internal writes wakes up from the deep slumber, I felt an urge to share some of my thoughts with the CAT aspirants pertaining to the verbal section.
During my preparation stage for the CAT at South Delhi PT center, I came across many fellow aspirants who used to fear the verbal section. Being good at verbal made me wonder (and sometimes sadistically happy) at their position. But one day while analyzing a mock CAT paper with a close friend, I came to know how deep the fear of verbal ability runs in them. Though not a very proud thing to say, but yes, I must admit that I was never really great in the quants section. But I never used to be afraid of it. DI was ok with me. But I have seen people who don’t understand the fundamentals of the CAT verbal section, live in a paranoid state of mind up until the CAT!
First and foremost, I will like to dispel a few myths about the CAT Verbal section that are being propagated by some of the CAT-coaching machinery complex:
Myth 1: you can clear verbal section, esp reading comprehension only by daily reading news paper for 3-5 months, esp. The Hindu!
Give me a break here! Is verbal ability some kind of basic linguistic aptitude test being done for low skilled workers from poor country? It is a very special test comprising the use of both our right and left brain faculties. It is not a simple comprehension test, but a test of your appreciation of the theme, spirit and logic of the article in the reading comprehension. So reading an undoubtedly great English daily like The Hindu will not be a sufficient condition to clear the ever toughening levels of CAT. I suggest you to first start off by reading comics like Tintin and Asterix (for the uninitiated in the reading world only though). For otherwise initiated, it would be good to augment the articles read by discussing the finer points of that article with your peers, or to yourself in thought. Imagine the article like being a slush of words and sentences in the Mixer of your brain. Imagine it being tossed up and down in the literal sense. Once you start focusing on the intent of the article, the theme and the basic punch that it carries, you will slowly start realizing that you have actually to feel intuitively, rather than merely applying a typical schoolboy learn-by-rote, think-by-steps approach! This should be taught at the coaching institutes in more simplified forms. Also make a habit of reading and appreciating great books by great authors. Those are the means of communicating their thoughts to you via a medium- the book. Don’t treat reading a load of books like a necessary evil kind of thing.
In essence: Cat is more about your ability to unlearn our faulty learning and thinking process acquired during the archaic schooling system which doesn’t takes into account the creativity and original thinking of the mind!

Myth 2: Apply speed reading techniques and skim/skip the lines and focus on the key words of the reading comprehension
Hmm….well…can there be a greater heresy being promoted in order to satiate the aspirants in a short amount of time by our so familiar and ubiquitous CAT-coaching machinery complex!
Speed reading is good when you read newspapers and have to skim through the columns to retain only the key words. But CAT comprehension needs you to literally get in the writer’s shoes and think from his/her perspective. And this cant be done by skimming/skipping the paragraphs for answers. This only promotes the bad habit of reverse engineering of answers by the test takers, who keep hunting the paragraphs for the key words asked in the question. But the CAT verbal questions are increasingly getting analytical and intuitive in nature, as I had gauged from the recent trends of CAT papers. And this faulty approach won’t help my dear aspirants.
So my advice is: make it a habit to be patient while reading and don’t lose focus of the bigger picture. As you keep on reading the passage, imagine yourself getting higher in the air and seeing the bird’s eye view of the things….this will surely help. But you have to develop a love of good quality reading stuff. The coaching institutes are more than happy to refer you a number of good books.
It is said that it takes about 21 days of sustained activity for our mind to convert that into a habit. And when the stakes are so high, it is worth coming out of our comfort zone. Also, a well read person reflects an aura of his/her own, and is respected everywhere.
Myth 3: good vocab is very essential for success in CAT
No…this is a totally false statement. Tell me, how many new words can be learnt by cramming word lists alone. And also, are they really worth the effort in CAT verbal? Is it a GRE or a Scripps Spell bee contest where the knowledge of obscurely tough words a differentiating point for success? A decent vocab is built by enough reading good books. And people often complain about having to refer to a dictionary every time they encounter an unknown word (this is perhaps one of the top reasons for people to start reading, since they detest referring dictionaries every time they come across a difficult word).
My advice is: don’t refer to dictionary often while encountering tough/unknown/alien sounding words. In fact, don’t refer to a dictionary for 90% of the times. In stead, try guessing the meaning of the word intuitively from the theme and genre of the passage, and especially the sentence containing the word. If you cant think of a meaning, fair enough. You will eventually come to know of it. But yes, 10% of the words are really exotic and ungues sable by many. For that, you can refer dictionaries and that should also add to the joy of discovering new and exotic words.
I urge the CAT 2008 aspirants to seriously start building there literature repertoire. It is very easy than it sounds. But since this is an open secret, and a simple key to success, people often try to take the harder, winding path (as with most of good things in life being free and simple, good books and coaching practice material may not be free, but yes, the technique can be simple)

Best wishes to all. For any type of query, post it as comment or mail me at ramandeep.sallaria@gmail.com. I promise to reply ASAP, my job and other trifly simple pursuits permitting!