No Guess paper to explore CAT exam has ever been successful during the past many years. Top mentors and experts are digging variety of questions on different topics for CAT 2014 to train their students for the actual test day. The glorious CAT every year beats down the guesses and brings more surprises in the exam to test the suitability of the test takers to ace the exam.
Till CAT 2013, no announcement to change the test pattern like increasing or decreasing the number of questions, time limit was made and despite this CAT used to throw surprise out of blue. Now when IIMs have categorically announced that CAT has gone for perceptible changes, you may expect any type of surprises like different form of questions in the test paper, increase/decrease of number of questions on a particular topic, more group questions or more individual questions.
No Practice test till now
The agonizing wait for the practice test to be made available on CAT 2014 site is not getting over, although IIMs have promised that the same would be available sometime in the middle of October 2014. The need has become more relevant as after 5 years of its CBT pattern, CAT 2014 is going to take a different shape and pattern in terms of freedom of sectional movement, number of questions and overall allotted time.
Expected question types in CAT 2014
According to experts on CAT preparation the expected type of questions, their numbers and important topics to cover could be as under
Verbal Ability
In view of Prof S K Agarwal, CAT preparation expert on Verbal Ability, following twisted form of questions can be expected and the ratio of questions on different topics is also expected to change. Now there will be 50 questions instead of 30 in Verbal Ability section in CAT 2014. The need for increased 66 percent questions is expected to change the past CAT pattern and the source topics.
Error correction: Expect 4 questions
Questions on correction of errors in sentences and paragraphs might increase to 4 in CAT 2014 from 2. It is expected that a few more such questions may be added to Verbal Ability section in CAT 2014.
Important topics and types of questions to be practiced
Aspirants are advised to build their basics on English Language. Parts of speech comprising Articles, Nouns, Use of pronouns, Adjectives, Adverbs, Prepositions, punctuation, conjunction; how to make the sentence correct by use of appropriate subject verb agreement, tenses, conditionals, modifiers, reported speech, active-passive should be well understood. Most of the candidates commit errors in use of singular-plural and this requires to be avoided.
There could be 4 Types of questions that you may anticipate in CAT 2014 on error correction
A. Picking out the correct sentences in a paragraph
This question type consists of four sentences, out of them one or more sentences may be correct. The options are given accordingly and you are supposed to mark the correct option. You may face difficulty in cracking this question if you do not have strong fundamentals. It is advisable to revisit the standard 10th grammar and tenses and then move ahead.
B. picking out the incorrect sentences
Opposite to earlier question type, it requires to pick out the sentences which are not correct in usage of Grammar, punctuation. Again the strong basics are required to solve this type of questions since they are based on rules of the core grammar, syntax and verbosity.
C. Getting correct underlined clauses
This question is formed with a long sentence with an underlined part or clause of the question sentence. The question may contain wrong use of words, parts of speech, incorrect subject verb agreement. In fact it is a test of the aspirant whether he/she can effectively use the language with better and good communicative formation of sentences.
Four options are given to replace the underlined clause. It can be a part of sentence, complete sentence, a phrase, an idiom with incorrect syntax, tense, verb or other grammatical error. One of the options (Mostly option A) is same as in the question-which may or may not be correct. If you find that the underlined part of the sentence is incorrect in one or other way, You may not waste time on reading the option A, as in most of the cases, it is the same as given in the question.
D. Re-writing the sentence
This type of question does not have any underlined part of sentence but the entire sentence may have to re-written. Besides, the sentence may contain one error, multiple errors or no error. Four options that follow the question have re-written sentences in different forms and you have to pick the most appropriate option. Option A, as in above repeats the question.
6 questions on Jumbled sentences; Out of context sentence in Jumbled Paragraph
Questions on jumbled paragraphs may have a twist and along with ‘out of context’ type questions there may be questions on different types of jumbled sentences. The questions may take smaller shapes also with an increase in their number.
On a similar or different pattern from past CAT years, the questions could be to choose the opening and concluding sentence of a jumbled paragraph.
2-3 Questions on Para completion
CAT has so far been asking questions to pick out the most appropriate last sentence of paragraph. However the question form can be changed to pick out the first sentence of the paragraph. Hence aspirants may also expect questions like picking out the first sentence of a paragraph along with the last sentence of the paragraph in CAT 2014.
9 Questions on Vocabulary usage
5-6 Questions maximum based on Vocabulary usage in CAT exam have so far been placed. This trend may change in CAT 2014 and questions in a range of 9-10 can appear in CAT 2014. Besides, more twisted questions can also be expected on vocabulary usage in CAT 2014. There have been questions on usage of similar and confused words, fill in the blank types, one word from everyday life but used differently or clubbed with phrasal verb and the aspirants have to find out the incorrect usage.
Apart from the regular question types that have been making their presence so far in CAT, aspirants may expect different types of questions on usage of synonyms and antonyms, phrasal verbs, proverbs, figures of speech and other contextual usage. Aspirants may also expect more questions on vocabulary usage like using the synonyms to fill in the blanks, collocations. Number of such questions, apart from the twist in them, may rise.
16 Questions on Reading Comprehension
So far there are 10 questions on Reading Comprehension in CAT constituting 33% part of this entire section and half of the Verbal Ability questions. With the increase of 20 questions in this section an increase of 6 questions on RC could not be ruled out. To increase this number CAT 2014 will have more RC passages which means instead of 3 RC passages CAT aspirants will have to read 5 RC passages in CAT 2014. Alternately CAT 2014 can increase the length of RC passages to form more questions on them.
All the other prominent management entrance examinations with 100 or more total questions, Reading Comprehension questions constitute half of the verbal ability questions. CAT 2014 if adopts the same standard it may not be surprising.
CAT 2014 aspirants should prepare a few common questions that appear in CAT for example Tone and Attitude of the author, Purpose of writing the passage, main idea of the passage.
15 Questions expected on Logical Reasoning
10 questions on Logical reasoning may increase to 15 if the ratio of LR questions remains the same in 2nd section of CAT 2014. It’s better to prepare on different topics of Logical Reasoning.
Following are the important topics and questions can be based on any of them
Blood Relations – family tree; Seating Arrangements; Syllogism; Proposition based followed by either deductive or inductive argument; Matching puzzles; Constraint based arrangements; Sets; Clocks and calenders; Assumptions; Direction sense; Binary logic; Venn Diagrams; Statements
35 questions on Quant
Till CAT 2013 composition of this section used to be of 20-22 questions on Quantitative Ability and 8-10 questions on Data interpretation. With the increase of 20 questions in this section, the prominent & probable topics that might contribute more to the changed and enhanced number of questions in Quant section in CAT 2014 could be as follows
Majority number of questions is expected from number system, time speed distance, geometry, permutation combination and probability. We can also expect questions from indices surds, logs, progression, averages and profit loss.
Around 10 questions in Quant section are expected to be of easy to moderate difficulty level. Rest are expected to be slightly on higher difficulty level . But those who are clear with the concepts will be able to solve these. In CAT 2013 questions on remainder theorems were not there in most of the sets. This year we can expect questions from each chapter of the quant.
15 Questions on Data Interpretation
In DI, we can expect 15 questions distributed over 4-5 sets. Sets can be based on Venn diagrams and pie charts and rest will be based on calculation. While 2 sets are expected to be easier, rest are supposed to be slightly more difficult and calculation intensive also.
Redraft the strategy to prepare
CAT 2014 will have a total of 50 questions for Quantitative Aptitude and Data Interpretation section and another 50 for Verbal Ability & Logical Reasoning section.
The more questions in CAT 2014 may call for more topics to be included in CAT 2014 from within the syllabus. You need to prepare the forgotten topics also.
So far CAT has been the only test with fewer questions to be solved in more time. The announcement for CAT 2014 with a changed pattern will have the issue on managing the time in CAT 2014. The weightage to sectional percentile also exists in CAT 2014 as existed earlier so the balanced focus on both the sections is required.
The suggestion
Experts suggest that aspirants should go through all the questions as there is no sectional and time restriction in movement from one section to the other in CAT 2014 and pick the easy questions first as they will be distributed at random basis.
Plan and maximize your attempts to make sure that you don't leave any easy question. The first attempt should tackle all the easy questions followed by the moderate ones and the difficult questions asking for more time should be attempted in the later attempts.
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