Every year around 28-34 questions are asked in XAT exam from Logical reasoning and Verbal ability section making it one of the most important parts of scoring well in the entrance test. So for scoring well in this section verbal ability or English is one of the key factors. Among these 28 questions, nearly 25 questions are from Verbal ability. In this article, we will share the type of questions asked from which topic, and some useful tips to prepare for them.
XAT is going to be held on January 07, 2018. XAT is organized by XLRI Jamshedpur in pen paper based mode. XAT Application procedure has been started from August 16, 2017 and the last date for applying is November 30, 2017.
XLRI follows the same XAT Exam Format every year in XAT. Verbal Ability is asked with logical reasoning, although weight for LR is very much less. In Verbal mostly questions are asked in the following forms:-
Vocabulary usage
Verbal Analogies
Fill in the blanks
Reading Comprehension
Synonyms and antonyms
Jumbled Words
Now we will discuss some preparation tips for attempting the verbal ability part
Reading Comprehension
Concentrate on Reading Comprehension; exercise more with a complete and conceptual understanding of phrases, sentences, and keywords, as it is the most important part. Solve two to three passages a day.Try to form questions based on passages and response them. A good number of questions in XAT are from Reading Comprehension part. More than half of Verbal Ability questions belong to this part. Passages in XAT are content and language enriched. Read as many as editorials, books, newspapers as it will enhance your reading skills as well as your vocabulary.
Keep the following tips in mind while responding the comprehension part:-
Get the overview of the entire passage: Try to understand the main idea/concept of the behind the given passage. Try to understand what the paragraph tries to convey. Complete you are with the concepts, more is the chances of you selecting the right response.
Time management: Try to manage your time while reading and responding the questions of this section. Don’t be too slow or too fast while responding these questions. Average reading speed one should have while reading comprehension is of 250 words per minute.
Search for structural words: Try to identify structural words, which are concerned to the continuation of an idea, for example additionally, similarly and moreover; or any contrast words - e.g. but, though, however; or conclusion words such as this, so and therefore to take out the right meaning of the sentence.
Idea generation: Every sentence in the paragraph has a relationship with each other. You must go via the paragraph cautiously and try to develop ideas simultaneously. Understanding the meaning of Reading comprehension becomes much completer after reading each paragraph.
Unlike CAT, XAT lays more emphasis on a basic understanding of English Language. Articles, Prepositions, Usage of adjective, adverb, verbs, nouns, and pronouns play an important factor in attempting the questions on mistake corrections and fill in the blanks. So you required to build your conceptual understanding of fundamentals-like parts of speech in grammar, time zones, punctuations etc. Try to find out your forte an in each section and thoroughly exercise them to score well.
Vocabulary
Increase your vocabulary as much as you can. It will not only help you in attempting synonyms and antonyms part also when you will attempt the essay writing part as if your article will be more content and vocabulary wise rich it will fetch you more marks.
For example- Suppose in a question you have to distinguish between ‘Avarice and Miser’, ‘ Pretty and Handsome’, ‘skilled and consummate’, and thousands of other such pairs and place them in a meaningful attitude , and you know the difference between all and their exact meaning then attempting such a question is not misery task However this is only possible if your vocabulary is enriched with such words.. The best way to understand accurate contextual usage is to exercise more questions with two blanks, to be filled in with accurate vocabulary words preferably synonyms.
Jumbled Paragraphs
The basic strategy to solve jumbled paragraphs is to exercise them as often as you can. One of the important tricks is to find out the connectors to sentences e.g. conjunctions, individual or relative pronouns (He/ she/ it /they /their /who / whose/that/which etc.) as they indicate that they must have been used in place of some nouns. Try to link the sentences in accordance with the information specified in the paragraph.
The given statement is grammatically correct. The word “But” is always followed by an objective pronoun (him).
Question 3
If she were I, she would have accepted the prize had she won it.
(1) was I, she would have accepted the prize if she had won it.
(2 )was I, she would have accepted the prize she had won.
(3) were I, she would have accepted the prize if she would have won it.
(4) were I, she would have accepted the prize had she won it.
Response
Option (4) - were I, she would have accepted the prize had she won it.
Explanation
Past perfect tense is the need in the conditional clause “if she had won it”. Also, “I” is needed after a form of the verb “to be”. And any hypothetical situation of “If I were she” or “If she were I” will have were and not was.
Verbal Ability Books for XAT 2018
Some preparation books that you may find useful while preparing for Verbal Ability part in XAT 2018
Book Name
Author’s Name/ Publisher’s Name
ISBN
Review
Reading Comprehension for CAT
Sujit Kumar
8131733084
Most of the questions in this book are from 2014 and consists of 15 to 25 passage.
Explanation of responses are also given which is a positive part
30 Days to a More Powerful Vocabulary
Wilfred Funk and Norman Lewis
067174349X
Very useful for building knowledge on antonyms and synonyms
Interactive approach
A Communicative Grammar of English
Geoffrey Leech
0582506336
The content of the book is relevant and easily understandable
Focus on grammar usage rather than the structure of the grammar
