Tackling English

Well, it is inevitable to compare CAT with cricket as there are so many analogies that can be drawn. As even at the last few minutes hard working & luck to find out the easy questions during the exam can be compared with the last ball of the last over in perfectly competitive match.
When you look at the English section of a CAT paper, there are two variables which help you maximize your score viz Attempts and Accuracy. Neatly juggling these two parameters will help one score the marks that would be required to get a good score in English.
For an English section, it is prudent to go slow in a paper which has more easy questions as the accuracy percentage in an easy paper (for the easy questions) would be higher and hence taking unnecessary risks (there will still be difficult questions) in the paper would reduce this overall accuracy thereby making your score relatively lower than others' scores.If the English section is difficult, then try to maximize the attempts and if it is easy, then concentrate on accuracy.
The broad classification for the English section can be viewed as RC (Reading Comprehension) & Non-RC sections. A good balance between the two can be made to create an impressive score in this section.
Attempting RC based questions will be much easier as we can easily guess the meaning of unknown words. Also, with the help of regular practice, speed reading can be adapted so that we can make ourselves strong enough in solving RC. Much space is there for guess work in RC.
Questions in Non-RC section are based on English grammar, though IFJ (Inference-Fact-Judgment) or Puzzle based questions are also common. These are binary type questions as you can answer these only if you know it. Guess work is not possible or proved to be highly risky.
Following table shows the trend for this section:



CAT 2007 had 25 questions in this section. A good attempt of around 15 questions had helped people to reach the cut off.
The clear fact arises is that RC, on an average contributes to 50% of total questions in CAT. The expected number of RC in this year will be 2. We advice our readers that they should try to attempt both RC, if possible.
Jumbled paragraphs will be an area of interest for the paper setters as this is frequently used as a speed breaker. Practice this section to get sure shot marks in these questions.
Try to go through major English newspapers daily as this will improve your ability of speed reading. Take a target of solving 3 RC a day in 15 minutes.
Best of Luck !!!

By:
Arjun Pal
Knowledge Cell - Globsyn Business School