When it comes to CAT, Vocabulary is unfortunately one of the least talked issues for the verbal section. Numerous strategies are adopted by the learners to master it, but still the art is not completely learnt.
A good grasp on vocabulary is essential for high scores in CAT. Students find many path holes; it is due to the existence of the difficult words. Let’s do a little post-mortem of importance of word power for CAT.
Let us look at Reading comprehensions first.
Consider this reading comprehension passages:
A hundred quays lined the waterfront, and the harbor was crowded with ships. Deepwater fishing boats and river runners came and went, ferrymen poled back and forth across the Blackwater Rush, trading galleys unloaded goods from Braavos and Pentos and Lys. Catelyn spied the queen’s ornate barge, tied up beside a fat-bellied whaler from the Port of Ibben, its hull back with tar, while upriver a dozen lean golden warships rested in their cribs, sails furled and cruel iron rams lapping at the water.
Another extract from the Reading comprehension will make it further clear:
As a rule, the more ignoble the hero the sharper the irony, when irony alone is the objective. It is heroism that creates the splendour and exhilaration that is unique to tragedy. The tragic hero normally has an extraordinary, often a nearly divine, destiny almost within grasp, and the glory of the original destiny never quite fades out of the tragedy.
The second theory of tragedy states that the act that sets the tragic process in motion must be primarily a violation of normal law, whether human or divine; in short, that the tragic hero must have a flaw that has an essential connection with sin. Again it is true that the great majority of tragic heroes do possess hubris, or a proud and passionate mind that seems to make the hero’s downfall morally explicable. But such hubris is only the precipitating agent of catastrophe, just as in comedy the cause) if the happy ending is usually some act of humility often performed by a noble character that is meanly disguised.
Quick look on both the extracts reveals very important point that without knowing the meaning of the emboldened words, it is impossible to answer the questions properly without any confusion. Also the question takes lot more time than normal to solve it.
Now let’s have a quick look on the Text completion extract that can be seen below:
Our grandfather was an entertaining raconteur; he used to regale us with marvelous anecdotes that we, in our childlike simplicity, accepted unquestioningly.
The emboldened words are not easily comprehensible, it may create obstacle in the understanding.
Certainly “Vocabulary is worth spending time for CAT perp” is true and not a myth.
They say “reading” is the best way to go for better word power. True, if you have years to prepare for CAT. Time is always crunch for serious CAT candidates and flashcards are the only thing at disposal, but the problem of human mind “No one remembers, what he remembers” makes those 1100 odd words boring and a mess for poor students. Interesting and completely FREE tool like vocabmonk.com with the gamified and personalised vocabulary building makes life easy.