Is there one thing you could do to improve your score in the verbal section – be it RC, grammar, vocab, parajumbles, summary/essence? Yes there is. Start reading. The amount it will help you cannot be emphasised enough. You’ll understand its value once you start seeing drastic improvements in your score. And your communication skills. And your confidence. And the increase in your knowledge. And improved thinking skills. I can go on, but I think you get the point.
How come?
To prove its importance in CAT is easy: in the last few years, out of 34 questions in the verbal section Reading Comprehension (RC) has had 24. That’s around 70 percent of the questions. So not only is it important, it is significantly important.
But that’s not all. Of the other 10 questions, 7 are parajumbles and 3 are summary/essence questions. Summary/essence questions are nothing but Main Idea questions of RC. And parajumbles ask you to arrange the jumbled up sentences into a coherent order. What skill do you think would help you do that? Obviously reading skills.
What about other types of questions that come in other competitive tests?
Grammar: Those who read as a hobby can do most of the grammar questions by ear alone. However, they read books written by people whose English is very good. Dan Brown and Chetan Bhagat don’t count. Sorry! In fact here’s a pretty good test: if it’s in a bestseller list of any category, it probably is not good for English and reading skills. It may be good for other reasons. But remember we’re focusing on a specific set of skills.
Vocabulary: When you read a book – or an article – that has words you don’t understand, two things happen: one, you go to a dictionary and two, you try to understand the meaning from the context. Both help immensely in building a damn good vocab.

Verbal Reasoning: If you read good non-fiction stuff – the kind that I’ll recommend – the author will try to prove his/her claims or conclusions with the help of data and/or reasons. To understand this properly and agree or disagree with the author, you’ll have to follow the train of thought. The more you’ll read the better you’ll get at this. You’ll also understand how good writers connect their sentences and how they start and end their paragraphs and sentences. So, in effect you are preparing for critical reasoning, para-completion, parajumbles, summary, conclusion and essence questions.
So there you have it! A perfect one-stop solution if ever there was one. If this doesn’t make you run to the next book or article, I don’t know what will. Anything else you do to become good at verbal will be an add-on. Of course you can – and should – build on strategies and tricks etc. But remember, reading alone can take you there (if you do it enough and properly).
But, and that’s a huuuugggggeeeeee but (oops!), it won’t happen overnight. Not even in two nights. Not in a month. Or even two. The time after which you would start seeing discernible difference is minimum 4 months. 4 months of incessant reading. If that sounds like too much, understand what you’re getting in return. A lifetime of skills mentioned above.

Other Benefits:
It also directly helps you in almost everything in your prep.
General Knowledge: Your GK will increase by leaps and bounds. You will know about history, about philosophy, about science, about geography – well, about whatever you read. And if you also read newspapers and magazines (more on this later), then your current affairs knowledge will also increase.
Group Discussions and Personal Interviews: One of my most common experiences as an aptitude test teacher is that a student clears the written test but is clueless about the next round – GDs and PIs. They sit mute in both of these; or if they do talk, it’s far from impressive. Sometimes it’s because of poor communication skills, but more often than not it’s because of lack of content. In fact, it’s common to see that poor communication skills are themselves an effect of lack of content. If you know about a particular topic thoroughly, it’s very difficult to stop you from talking, poor communication skills be damned.
WAT: The same applies to WAT – Written Ability Test. You’re given a topic and you’re supposed to write an essay on it. Where do you get the stuff to write from? If you don’t have content, your essay would vindicate George Berkeley: “Few men think; yet all have opinions.” So, how do you write a more substantial, and hence a more convincing, essay? Where do you get content from? I think you know the answer by now. Yes, reading.
Enough of theory now, you say. It’s easy to tell everyone what to do, far more difficult is to tell how. Cool! So off we go. That’s the subject of the next post.