How To Solve Reading Comprehension in CAT?
Published on 25th March 2025, 3:20 PM
The VARC section of CAT 2025 combines two different topics: reading comprehension (RC) and verbal ability (VA). The CAT VARC section is mainly dominated by reading comprehension, which constitutes roughly 67% of the section. The most effective and efficient way to improve your VARC scores is to understand the main idea behind the question and frame a preparation strategy around it.
RCs are there to test your reading capability and understanding of the passage. For this, the simple approach should be to enhance your reading ability; try to read as much as possible, for example, 45 minutes of newspaper reading or maybe some articles from different sources available online, and set your target of solving 3-4 RCs each day. If we talk about the VA part, identify different question types and solve as many previous year questions (PYQs) as possible.
How To Prepare Reading Comprehension For CAT 2025?
For the CAT Reading Comprehension part, it is necessary to read as much as possible. Follow these steps to familiarize yourself with this section.
> Reading the newspaper and practicing comprehension passages will help you answer questions faster.
> Solve the CAT Previous Year VARC Papers to understand the level of difficulty of the section and the exam.
> Examine your performance by taking online mock tests.
> Once you receive the paper, give it a few minutes, analyze it, and develop a strategy for attempting the section.
> DO NOT STICK TO A QUESTION! - This is a blunder and can cost you a lot. Try to maximize your answers. The plan behind getting a high percentile does not require answering the trickiest questions. Instead, focus on selecting the easiest questions you are most confident about to gain marks.
> If you are losing concentration while reading RCs, try to customize your approach. Try doing 1 RC first, then solving a few VA questions, going back to RC, and so on, to keep yourself engaged.
> Focus on what the author wants to convey, not what you want to interpret. You are more likely to reach a conclusion if you try to understand what the writer is trying to say than giving it your own interpretation.
Ways To Improve Grammar
> Study the fundamentals of grammar, which you may even learn from school-level grammar books, to build your foundation.
> Grammar and vocabulary are considerably aided by resource books such as Total English and Word Power Made Easy.
RC Passages & Elimination Technique
While solving an RC passage, try to use the “elimination strategy”, i.e. eliminating answer options that are irrelevant to the passage. To achieve mastery of this technique, you need to bolster your reading speed and practice more than 700+ RCs until the CAT Exam. Also, following the reverse technique, i.e. looking at the answer options before looking at the passage, can greatly help hit the correct answer. This strategy has observably been the most successful and was repeatedly preached by CAT 99 %ilers. Here is how you use this elimination technique to ace your VARC:
> Refrain from extreme answer options: You must watch out for options that stretch the main idea too far. Sometimes, this can be inferred from a single word. E.g., words like “all”, “never”, or “every” point to the extremity of a given statement, deferring from the main idea of the question.
> Avoid answer options contradictory to incidents mentioned in the passage: Some answer options will “flip” a relationship. They’ll say that B caused A when the passage states that A caused B, or they’ll say something came first in the process when it really came later.
> Eliminate Outlier/Distortion: These are the most straightforward answer option to eliminate. They bring in information or ideas that weren’t mentioned at all in the passage.
Be wary of choices supported by the passage but don't answer the question being asked: As we said above, this is a very common wrong answer type, which is why it’s so important to make sure you fully understand what is asked in the question before selecting the answer.
Preparation Tips For CAT Reading Comprehension
> Practice 3RC & 10VA Questions Regularly: After you have spent at least a few weeks reading and developing your vocabulary and grammatical abilities, you can begin practicing on RC (Reading Comprehension) sets and VA (Verbal Ability) questions. If you have just started and don’t know where to begin, you can begin with 1RC in a day and gradually increase the number of questions.
> Reading enhances your English skills. Read books, periodicals, newspapers, and novels to improve your vocabulary.
> Try solving RC passages from different genres and keep track of those which you are able to solve in a limited time with utmost accuracy to improve your VARC scores.
> You can also utilize tools like Aeon Essay and 3 Quarks. They provide articles and essays written in sophisticated and proficient English, allowing aspirants to improve their reading ability.
However, maintaining consistency is the ultimate trick to approaching the CAT VARC section. No matter what strategies one follows or how flawless their strategy might be, it is useless and bound to fail if you don’t practice consistently. Keep reading to improve your grammar and vocabulary, practice mock tests regularly, and solve at least two RC and VA questions daily.
How To Improve Your CAT RC Scores?
The CAT VARC section is just there to check your reasoning and analytical skills rather than just to assess your English language proficiency. There is no need to gauge the meaning of each and every word of the passage; rather, try to get a comprehensive understanding of the passage.
Practice is the only solution!
Attempting and analyzing mocks is the key to acing an examination. Try to work on improving your reading speed; read as much as possible. Try solving passages of different genres to understand your areas of improvement. Read and write summaries of short stories or movies for better comprehension. Lastly, focus on attempting full-length and sectional tests to improve your accuracy and adopt the right test-taking strategy for yourself.
Conclusion
To sum it up in short, having an upper edge in vocabulary and grammar helps better understand the passage. However, you don't need to understand every word of that instead, you need to understand the comprehensive meaning of the passage. In the CAT exam, they will not ask you questions related explicitly to vocabulary or grammar; instead, they will ask questions around the crux of the passage. Thus, you must work on reading speed and comprehension of the given passage. It is advisable to solve 3-4 RCs daily, read lots of newspapers, and try using online platforms that provide passages and summarize them to improve your verbal ability and reading comprehension.
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Best of Luck!!