Subodh Kant Techniques RC

8/8/2019 Subodh Kant Techniques RC

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Ever since you learned to read, you've been tested on yourcomprehension of written material, so it's no surprise that Reading

Comprehension is the most familiar section in all of standardizedtesting. Medicine, law, archaeology, psychology, dentistry, teaching,

businessthe exams that stand at the entrance to study in these and

other fields have one thing in common: Reading Comprehensionpassages. No matter what academic area you pursue, you have to

make sense of dense, even unfamiliar prose, and business school is noexception.

If you're looking to score a 100 percentile on the CAT or XAT, then youshouldn't expect to see too many easy Reading Comp passages. For

the purposes of this thread, I have compiled for your test-takingpleasure a group of the densest, nastiest passages we could find. If

you can ace these in a reasonable amount of time, it's safe to say that

you have absolutely nothing to fear from Reading Comp questionscome test day.

My Planning for articles in this thread

1. Some basic techniques

2. Practice for every techniques discussed

3. Toughest Practice material in question format

4. Some dense reading material (for this I am dependent on you people. Search theeditorial and other articles page of international newspaper like NYT, The Guardian

(IIMs favourite) Wall Street Journal etc.

5. Analysis and explanation.

Reading comprehension tests critical reading skills. Among other

things, it tests whether you can:

Summarize the main idea of a passage

Differentiate between ideas explicitly stated in a text and thoseimplied by the author

Make inferences based on information in a text

Analyze the logical structure of a passage

Deduce the author's tone and attitude about a topic from the text

In reading comp, you are presented with a reading passage (in an areaof business, social science, biological science, or physical science), andthen asked 3 - 6 questions about that text. You are not expected to be

familiar with any topic beforehandall the information is contained inthe text in front of you. In fact, if you happen to have some previous

knowledge about a given topic, it is important that you not let thatknowledge affect your answers.


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Naturally, some passages will be easier than others, though all willpresent a challenge. The passages will have a tone and content that

one might expect from a scholarly journal. Expect to see 3 or 4Reading Comp passagesin areas of business, social science, and

natural scienceand a total of about 15 - 25 questions.

THE 4 BASIC PRINCIPLES OF READING COMPREHENSION

Here are the basic things that you need to succeed on ReadingComprehension:

1. Look for the topic and scope of a passage; the author's

purpose and structure; and the author's voice.

Usually we read to learn something or to pass the time pleasantly.

Neither of these goals has anything to do with the CAT. Nor does

reading for content. On the CAT, we don't want to read for overallcontentwe want to read strategically. There's just no time under

strict test conditions to understand everything that's being said, and,as we'll see, no payoff in it either.

So what does CAT reading involve? Broadly stated, it involves readingto identify 3 general elements: topic and scope, the author's

purpose and passage structure, and the author's voice.

Topic and Scope

As you work through the first few sentences of a passage, you

need to determine the topic. If it's a science passage, what branch

of science is it about? If it's astronomy, what part of astronomy?Stars?

Now, as to scope. Think ofscope as a narrowing of the topic. If the

topic is industrial safety regulations, what narrower definition can we

present that still describes all of the passage? Is there a comparison toanother type of safety regulation? Is there a comparison between

safety regulations in different historical eras? Is there an analysis ofthe regulations' histories? Or is the passage concerned only with a

small aspect of the regulationsthe ones pertaining to pregnant

workers, for example?

Notice the questions in the previous paragraph. They may not readwell, but we left them that way for a reason. Those questions illustrate

the kind ofthinking you'll need to do as you work through a


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passage on Test Day. Once you have the topic and narrowed down itsscope, you have finished step 1. But what then? You still don't have a

firm grasp of the passage.

Author's Purpose and Structure

Almost every Reading Comp question hinges on your ability to stepback from the text and analyze why the author is writing in the first

place. The CAT demands that you figure out the author's purpose andthe passage structure, because that's the best way for the test makers

to test how you think about the prose you read.

Like most sophisticated writing, the prose you will see on the CAT

doesn't reveal its secrets so explicitly. Authors always have a purpose,of course, and always have a structural plan for carrying out that

purpose, though they don't often announce them. That's your job, as

the reader.

Baldly laying out the why and how of a passage up front isn't ahallmark of CAT Reading Comp passages. And even more important

(as far as the test makers are concerned), if ideas were blatantly laid

out, the test makers couldn't ask probing questions about them. So, inorder to set up the questionsto test how we think about the prose

we readthe CAT uses passages in which authors hide or disguisetheir statement of purpose and challenge us to extract it. If you came

across the following first sentence of a typical passage, could you

identify the topic and scope?

The great migration of European intellectuals to the United States in the second

quarter of the 20th century prompted a transmutation in the character of Western

social thought. ...........

First, what's the topic?Second, what's the scope?

Why the author is writing?

First, what's the topic?

The migration of European intellectuals to the United States in thesecond quarter of the 20th century.

That's clear.

Second, what's the scope? (How can we narrow the topic?)

Well, the passage looks as if it will discuss the effects of this migrationon social thought.


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So, using what we know about topic and scope, we can easily deduce

why the author is writing.

His purpose, we might say, is "to explore how the arrival of European

thinkers during the period 1926-1950 changed Western socialthought."

And notice the implied structure of what will follow. Don't you expectthe author to first describe the migration westward and then explain

what the "transmutation" was? (And it probably will be in that order;CAT authors are nothing if not logical.)

The author will never say, "Here's why I write." But unless you figureout why he is writing, you won't be able to analyze why each piece

each paragraph and each detailis there and how it's being used.

Test yourself: TSP

If you came across the following first sentence of a typical passage,

could you identify the TOPIC , SCOPE and PURPOSE (TSP)

1. Cyberspace is often thought of as a realm of freedom, even of fun.

Topic -Scope -

Purpose -

2. As Asia faces the global economy of the future, it is necessary to

take stock of the once arcane issue of intellectual property.Topic -

Scope -

Purpose -

3. The idea that the human species could alter something as huge andcomplex as the earths climate was once the subject of an esoteric

scientific debate.

Topic -Scope -

Purpose -

4. Footie totty, tennis babes, brolly dollies - these cliched images of

women for whom the biggest decision of the day is a leg wax or amanicure still persist.

Topic -


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Scope -Purpose -

5. It is a leap to go from writing poems about ruins to making ruins torepresent poems, but early eighteenth century England did just this.

Topic -Scope -

Purpose -

6. The story of jazz is a miniature history of the modern mind.

Topic -Scope -

Purpose

7. Warhol was one of the few artists of his time to acknowledge the

capitalist nature of art capitalism.Topic -

Scope -

Purpose -

8. Perhaps more than any other single experience, the Irish migrationsof the nineteenth century have captured the modern popular

imagination as the most disturbing, indeed by some accounts the most

tragic, chapter in the recent history of human relocations.Topic -

Scope -

Purpose -

9. Visiting South Korea at the end of 1998 was rather like visiting aonce-proud friend who has suddenly been engulfed by a profound

identity crisis.Topic -

Scope -

Purpose -

10. The growth of the new nationalism and social and political

particularism summarized by Michael Walzer in 1992 as the new

tribalism is one of the most profound crises in the familiar sphereof political culture at the end of the twentieth century.Topic -

Scope -

Purpose -

11. The overwhelming majority of people who develop problems with


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anorexia nervosa and bulimia regardless of nationality or social class are female.

Topic -Scope -

Purpose -

12. Now for the more conservative approach to the Grandmother

Paradox: time travelers dont change the past because they werealways a part of it.

Topic -

Scope -Purpose -

13. Montana Scalps provocative statement about her intentions inwriting Mrs. Dallowayhas regularly been ignored by the critics, since it

highlights an aspect of her literary interests very different from thetraditional picture of the poetic novelist concerned with examining

states of reverie and vision and with following the intricate pathwaysof individual consciousness.

Topic -

Scope -Purpose -

14. To teach is to create a space in which obedience to truth ispractised.

Topic -

Scope -Purpose -

15. Innovations, development of new products, to extend the lines and

expand the markets of existing products by adding new features,styles, packaging, pricing all these inexorably belong to the arsenal

of devices by which a modern company competes.

Topic -Scope -

Purpose -

16. Science does not grow by simple accumulation.Topic -Scope -

Purpose -

17. It was late October, and the lights had been dimmed in the

Beckman conference center at the University of California at Irvine.


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The chief technology officer of Total Entertainment Network (TEN), agaming company, was demonstrating how a group of players in

cyberspace could match wits in an animated shoot-em-up calledQuake.

Topic -

Scope -Purpose -

18. Beijings trendy taverns generally have two distinct sets of

patrons.

Topic -Scope -

Purpose -

19. Talk with ever-voluble Sun Microsystems Inc. CEO Scott McNealy,

and you may hear one of his favorite quips: Conventional wisdomdoesnt contain a whole lot of wisdom. He believes it because of his

own experience.Topic -

Scope -

Purpose -

20. With its dimpled aluminum facade and TV-screen-shaped windows,

Pittsburghs Alcoa Building once exemplified the power and pizzazz ofthe classic corporate skyscraper.

Topic -

Scope -Purpose

Author's Voice

An important part of critical reading is distinguishing between factual

assertions and opinions/interpretations. It's theopinions/interpretations that the Reading Comp passages are built on,

and you should pay the most attention to them. Let's say you comeupon a paragraph that reads:

The coral polyps secrete calceous exoskeletons, which cementthemselves into an underlayer of rock, while the algae deposit still

more calcium carbonate, which reacts with sea salt to create an eventougher limestone layer.

A bunch of statements of fact, right? But don't focus on these facts.Keep reading until you get to the more "abstract" author's point:


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Subodh Kant Techniques RC

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