Grab Vocab for CAT 2014!

It’s that season of the year when all the management aspirants pull up their socks to crack the toughest management entrance exams of the country. Whether, CAT or other entrances, such as XAT, IIFT, TISS, CMAT or MICAT, all these exams have one thing in common. And that is the Verbal or the English section. This section is equally important and contributes up to 50% of the questions of all these exams. Hence, the preparation of this portion can never be undermined.

Though, this article highlights a very important arena of this section which is Vocabulary, popularly known as ‘vocab’. You need to have a good command on your vocabulary or word power. Not only do you need good vocab for the direct word meaning questions but, you also need it for tackling other verbal questions and most importantly the Reading Comprehension passages. Your knowledge of words and their meanings must be quite vast in order to partially, if not completely, comprehend an RC passage.

There are many tricks which can help you learn new words and improve your vocab but, you must aim at improving their recall value too. As you may know many new words but, may not be able to remember their meanings when needed.

Here is a list of some of the smart tricks which can help you learn new words as well as remember their contextual meaning for long:

• Read, Read and Read! There is no other substitute to it.
• Keep a dictionary handy. Download a free dictionary App if you think an Oxford is too heavy to carry. But no excuses!
• Build your own clues, stories around each word so that you have a personal connect with them and you always remember them.
• Create your own visuals related to every new word. That helps building a story of that word.
• Try and use the new words learnt in your daily communication (both verbal and written).

So, get cracking for this year’s top management entrances by building a strong vocab to sail through the cut off of the verbal section!

Take a look at this fun presentation which gives you a glimpse of how to build your clues and  visuals around words!