If you are taking CAT 2011, and if you are worried about the Verbal Ability section because you do not have a very strong vocabulary, don’t fret, but work hard on it. Having a good vocabulary base helps you in cracking the questions from all the topics. Even if you are not taking CAT or other MBA entrance exams, having a strong vocabulary will only add to your skills as you will find its usage in several walks of your life. In this article, experts will suggest you on how to improve your word power.
Improving word power by reading
The best way to improve your stock of words is by reading a lot. The more you will read, newer the words you will come across and hence strengthen your stock of words. “Even if you are not an avid reader, you can start by reading something which interests you. It can be fiction or sports and entertainment page of the newspaper. Slowly you can advance your reading habits,” advices Gejo Sreenivasan, Principal Consultant, Career Launcher.
But only reading best sellers is not going to help you much in this regard. You should read classic and acclaimed literature. Books of Amitabh Ghosh, Arundhati Roy etc. are enriched with words that are not used in daily life and can thus empower your word stock.
You should also read a business newspaper regularly. “It will not only help you learn the business jargon but will also help you for Reading Comprehension and Data Interpretation and Logical Reasoning section,” Sreenivasan states.
Strategy to enhance your vocabulary
You should always keep a pocket dictionary handy so that whenever you come across a new word you can check the meaning and note it down. Buying a pocket dictionary is one of the best investments you can make. Another book which you should refer to is ‘Word Power’ by Norman Lewis. “The Word Power by Norman Lewis will help you learn new words. You should go back to the book again and again to learn new words, as well as to revise the old ones,” mentions R Shiva Kumar, Director, R & D, Career Launcher.
Another important and popular way to increase your vocabulary is by using flash cards. Shipra Pandey, student of MICA, who scored 94.89 percentile in CAT 2009 explains the process by saying, “Write target words and phrases on the cards (at the back as well as on the front). As you review the list, separate the words in two piles; those you understand and those you do not. Keep going through the yet-unlearned words until you attain a mastery of them. You can do that by learning the root of the words which will help you remember what you have learned. Keep a notebook to help you remember the words that you have learned.”
You can remember the meaning of a word by attaching a mental image along with it. Regional Academic Head of IMS Learning, Hanumant Sabharwal explains this by exemplifying, “For the word ‘suave’ associate the mental image of Shahrukh Khan with it. For the word swanky, you can associate the mental image of Mercedes!”
Shipra shares her methodology, “I'd sit down with the newspaper or whatever I would be reading and highlight the words I didn’t understand. Then I looked them up on the words of WordWeb dictionary on my desktop and their synonyms and antonyms and then I would jot these words down on the yellow post its which would be stuck on doors and the mirror in my room. These I would see for some days and when I was confident I remembered them, they'd get down and new ones posted.”
Strategy while taking CAT
It is not possible to know each and every word. “There is infinite number of words and it is not possible for anyone to learn all of them,” says Sreenivasan. In case you find an unfamiliar word during CAT, you can try to understand the meaning from the context, especially in the Reading Comprehension passages. “To improve vocabulary you should be able to understand the meaning of every new word that comes across to you. When you come across words of which you do not know the meaning, you can figure out the meaning from the context in which it is used,” suggests Sreenivasan.
Stay tuned to MBAUniverse.com for more on CAT 2011 preparation.
