Starting with this feature, Pagalguy is starting a month-long series of articles on how to crack the Maharashtra Common Entrance Test (CET). These are being written by Shashank Prabhu, based on his experiences of topping it last year. In case you missed the update, the Maharashtra CET 2011 will be held on February 27, 2011. Hope you all find these articles useful.

This article deals with the Reading Comprehension and Fill-in-the-Blanks questions which make regular appearance in the CET.

Both types of questions feature in almost all MBA entrance tests. But in the CET they form a bulk of the questions and are a bit easier than in other tests. The CET requires you to solve 200 questions in 150 minutes and of these the Math problems invariably take the most time to solve. So solving ‘Fill in the blanks’ and Reading comprehension quickly gives you a good chance at scoring a good chunk of marks in the least possible time. The saved-time can be used to solve the tougher visual reasoning and quant calculation-based questions.

Reading Comprehension

The basics remain the same. A passage is followed by a set of related questions. While most other entrance tests have 4-5 questions per passage, the CET attaches a fat 15 questions to a single passage. The passages are general and not that verbose but with the clock ticking, one becomes prone to making silly mistakes in reading the questions or comprehending them.

The passages are moderate in length and of the 15 questions, nine are based on the facts and inferences in the passage while the remaining six questions are based on synonyms and antonyms of selected words in context of the passage. The words appear in bold in the passage for easy recognition.

The thing to remember is that the synonym or antonym of words must be in context of the passage, and not of the word’s absolute meaning. So if the options appear very close to each other in meaning, one can eliminate the wrong answer by judging the harshness or the impact which the word makes in the specified sentence of the passage.

The questions based on facts and inferences are pretty straightforward and a cursory glance is usually enough to spot the correct answer. A few questions might require you to make inferences and so if there are close options, it can be confusing. These questions can raise the overall difficulty level of the questions to ‘above average’.

You can use many strategies here. You could first read the passage and then answer the questions, or you could read the questions first and then search for the answers in the passage, or combine both these methods by first quickly glancing through the passage and then reading the questions to find their answers. With most questions being factual rather than interpretative, the first strategy would be a better bet. However, the best strategy is the one which suits you the best. So experiment around and zero in on a strategy that works for you.

Another common question is — at what stage of the exam should one attend the reading comprehension questions? To that I would say that if you usually take longer time to solve a passage, better to first solve a few other questions and gain confidence before attempting reading comprehension. But if you consider yourself to be very good at it, I’d suggest that you solve the 15 questions of reading comprehension within 10 minutes right at the start of the test and strive for at least 12 correct answers.

What I’ve written above is based on the pattern observed in the CET since several years. Just in case CET decides to change the pattern of reading comprehension questions this year and gives you two or three short passages with the questions split equally across, the basic strategy remains the same though the material to read will increase.

Multiple fill-in-the-blanks

This type of questions is also common in many aptitude tests. But while other tests center these questions around vocabulary, prepositions, conjunctions, idioms and such, the CET tests if one can get the essence of the paragraph right and fill the blanks with words which are grammatically appropriate and complete the passage from a logical standpoint.

The words are not very difficult to comprehend and are drawn from our day-to-day usage. However, confusion happens if more than one word means the same thing. At such times you have to gauge the tone of the passage — whether it is harsh or easy going and neutral. This can help you eliminate the extreme options. Also, the word that you feel is the correct answer should fit into the blank as it is without the need to add any additional preposition, change tense, etc. If something isn’t fitting as it is, it is not the correct answer. After selecting the answer, quickly read the completed sentence again and check to see if it is grammatically perfect.

There is no need to mug up word-lists at this point in time. If one has a regular reading habit and sufficient common sense, one can breeze through these questions. One strategy you can use is to first read the entire passage and then think of words you would fit into the blanks if no options were given. After that, take a look at the answer options and fill in the one that you’d thought of or the one which is closest in meaning to the word you’d have liked to fill in place of the blank. One way to not make errors is to read the passage again after filling in all the options. If it doesn’t sound right, review the answers. Overall, solving a caselet of 10 questions should ideally take around 6-7 minutes.

Both the reading comprehension and fill in the blanks types of questions take around 15 minutes to complete in total and the rewards are huge. It is not that difficult to attain high accuracy on these questions and so getting 20 on 25 is certainly possible.

All the articles posted on CET 11 prep can be accessed through this link.

Cracking Maharashtra CET 2011

If you would like to suggest to me the topics and subjects I should cover in the Maharashtra CET article series, you can email me at [email protected].