Understanding and cracking Reading Comprehension

We always think of how pedantic and boring the passages for Reading Comprehension can be. You can take the exact same topic and write about it at any “level” of writing: grade-school level, high-school level, university-level, magazine-story level, casual-email-to-a-friend level, and so on. These different levels or styles are designed to be appropriate for a particular audience, and that determines such features as vocabulary, sentence complexity, and “general human interest” level. For example, a general-market magazine demands pieces that are written with a very engaging style of writing—the reader never has time to get bored or be distracted by something else. Academic writing, by contrast, is a much more formal style, especially as you get up to university-level writing (or even higher). You’ll have more advanced vocabulary, of course, but the differences go well beyond that. It is much more common to employ sentence structures that are used only in writing; nobody would ever speak aloud that way, even in formal speech. And it’s more common to write dense sentences—sentences that pack a whole lot of complexity into a relatively small number of words. The test writers don’t write these RC passages specifically for the CAT. Rather, they cut down and adapt actual academic articles for their test. So this academic material that you may have missed out on in college is literally the exact type of writing that you’re going to see on the CAT.As a result, CAT testers require lots of exposure to and practice with reading at a university level. Some people have a natural advantage in that they regularly read and analyze this type of writing (whether in school or for work). Others, though, don’t or didn’t—or they did but conducted those studies in a language other than English. If this describes you, then you have some work to do to remedy the problem. FROM WHERE TO START? You can start by reading newspapers,especially the editorial section, as well as some blogs on the internet that you may find interesting or simply novels of your choice.As you read, jot down a few notes to help you articulate the main ideas and main contrasts. Then try to say or write a summary, in your own words, about what the author is trying to say. Don’t focus in on all of the details—your goal is not just to repeat the content. Pretend you’re talking to a friend and trying to summarize the main points of this really interesting article that you read.Ideally, in fact, find a friend with whom to have these conversations! If you know someone else studying for the CAT, you two can help each other. If you have a friend or family member who is naturally good at this kind of stuff, that person can also help you to stretch your CAT Reading Comprehension skills further. Here are some other exercises to try: — You and your study friend both read the same article, then both summarize in writing. Send your summaries to each other (at the same time!). Where do you agree or say the same things? Where do you disagree—or where do you write about something that your friend doesn’t and vice versa? Then get together to discuss those similarities and differences. — You and your already-a-good-reader friend both read the same article, then you summarize the article either in writing or aloud for your friend. S/he tells you where you did a good job of summarizing and where you might have misinterpreted or missed important points. —Variation on the above: your friend does NOT read the article ahead of time. You summarize for your friend (and your friend is allowed to ask questions if confused about anything). Then, your friend reads the article to see whether there are any major discrepancies and tells you what you may have missed or misinterpreted. Here are a different number of topics that you can try: TOPIC: Business. Sub-Topics: Business Ethics; Globalization; Leadership; Management. TOPIC: Health and Medicine. Sub-Topics: Cancer; Health and Exercise Science; Immunology. TOPIC: Humanities. Sub-Topic: History. Specialty: Any. TOPIC: Humanities. Sub-Topic: Literature. Specialty: Nonfiction Prose*. TOPIC: Social Science. Sub-Topics: Anthropology; Economics; Sociology. TOPIC: Science. Sub-Topic: Biology. Specialty: Developmental Biology; Genetics. TOPIC: Science. Sub-Topic: Earth Science. Specialty: Atmospheric; Climate; Geology; Planetary. For the science-y/more technical ones, stick to topics whose titles sound pretty introductory.   reading comprehension for cat pdf reading comprehension for cat free pdf download reading comprehension for cat tips cat previous year reading comprehension reading comprehension for cat books cat rc passages on philosophy wordpandit rc of the day rc for cat