Working on English communication skills

This episode of Vamsee's Verbal Volley 3 talks about How you can Work on your English communication skills

Now that we have looked at how to tackle the RCs in the last two articles, lets us move ahead and look at the general approach towards preparing for the other sections of the verbal ability part of CAT and other exams.

The non-RC questions in the verbal section of CAT try to test the student’s “English usage skills”. Simply put, they are trying to test your ability to communicate efficiently in English language. Bear in mind that this doesn’t refer only to the ability to speak in English, but also the ability to comprehend both written and oral communications.

English as a language is extremely popular and has survived over centuries mainly due to its ability to adapt and imbibe variations. Thus, while the rules of grammar act as the basic building blocks for the language, every rule is now filled with countless exceptions to it. So the best way to get comfortable with the language is continuous exposure to it through various media. Over a period of time, one tends to develop an instinctive understanding of the language and can easily pick out the right usage from wrong. Regular reading habits go a very long way in developing one’s grasp of the language and develop the “it-doesn't-sound-right” aptitude towards the language. But another key method for improving one’s language skills is listening to a lot of English usage.

What to read?

Newspapers are a very good place to begin reading exercises. Newspapers carry a variety of articles by authors with varying degree of language proficiency, thus suiting to everyone’s needs. The editorial sections of the newspapers are especially useful for this purpose. One, this section is always written by established writers and specialists in the fields, and hence are a notch above the rest of the articles in the paper as far as the standard of the language goes. Secondly, these writers have strong opinions on the matters being discussed and will provide all the arguments to support the same. This will help you to frame a clear understanding of the topic being discussed. This is also useful in the context of preparing for the GDs and interviews in the future. And thirdly, editorial articles are often about events that may not be in the news currently, but were featured a couple of weeks or months ago. In such cases, these articles help to recollect the old information and act as a refresher for the news.

However, one need not restrict oneself to newspapers alone. I would recommend people to read anything that they are comfortable with, ranging from Harry Potter novels and articles on internet to Filmfare magazines and cricket related articles. Reading a subject of your comfort will help you focus more on the way the content is structured in the articles rather than the content itself. However, over a period of time, try to diversify the range of topics that you read about and don’t restrict yourself to reading the same stuff again and again. As I said, English is highly adaptable and different people from different parts of the world have their own ways of using the language, none of which can be deemed as wrong. So expose yourself to all these styles of English communication.

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bhasker2199 I'M convinced abut what u said?
but if our vocab is not good then what sort of book v should prefer????
please tell

bhoopendra603 ya its the way to go through

sumeet8262 great

teena8263 hiiiiiiii

this is tina i wanna know abt how i can crack the cat test? would u tell me abt d cat

ashish5243 thanx....

vamsee2111

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