Increase your Word Power : By Arun Sharma

 Arun Sharma shares tips for increasing your word power in the language section of CAT

There are two types of strategies that you can use to increase your score in the Verbal Ability or Reading Comprehension sections of the CAT: short-term strategies or medium- to long-term. It doesn't matter what strategy you choose, your ability to understand and read English depends on how fluently you use the language at different levels. It is important to assess your proficiency at each level to improve your score.

LANGUAGE LEVELS

Aptitude tests like the CAT generally test candidates' proficiency at each level: word, sentence, paragraph, and passage. These tests can also be used to assess your knowledge at the book level (multiple books) and chapter level (multiple paragraphs). This article will focus on maximizing your word power in CAT.

WHAT CAN YOU DO TO INCREASE YOUR WORD POWER?

In India, the CAT and other entrance exams for management have placed more emphasis on functional knowledge of words than memorizing words by rote learning. This is something that has been required for GREs. This is how to improve your understanding of words on the CAT.

1. Your current level of ability. Your comprehension of the articles in a newspaper and a magazine will help you to judge your vocabulary level. Every article in a newspaper or magazine is intended for an average reader. If you have difficulty understanding an article in a newspaper or magazine, this is a sign that your vocabulary may be below average. Take a look at the words that you are unable to comprehend in an article of 1000 words. During this process, you might notice two types of words that you struggle to understand. Words you don't understand but can understand the meaning, and those which are within the context of the passage. Words you don't know, which can make it difficult to understand the passage. Your vocabulary level will be determined by the number of words within each of the categories. An individual with excellent language skills would be able to read a passage of 1000-1500 words while only encountering nine words that are unintelligible to him/her.

For this purpose, a newspaper such as The Times of India is the best paper. If you do a thorough analysis of the CAT or other management aptitude exams and look at the words that they require, you will find that there are no words that you could miss if your entire reading of a newspaper like The Times of India is for six to twelve months.

2. Not only should you write down the words, but also attach a visual value to each one.

3. You might also want to search the thesaurus for words that have similar meanings, so you can remember multiple words from one word. This exercise should be repeated until the number of unidentified words in each 1000-1500 word article is reduced to one digit.

You should not only focus on words but also idioms and phrases. For this purpose, you can refer to a dictionary or a list of phrasal verbs that you could download from Google.

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