CAT Exam: Dealing with RC passages for computer based test

If you’re planning for cracking the CAT examination then you must be obtaining anxiety regarding handling the Reading Comprehension queries.

The question that disturbs the scholars most is, ‘How can I manage the Reading Comprehension passages if they are too lengthy?’ the opposite queries that they are concerned regarding is, ‘How do I underline or mark the passages?’ Our specialists will help you answer these queries during this article.

Firstly, the specialists have mentioned that you simply need not worry simply because the format of CAT communicating is computer based mostly and not paper pencil based. As Vivek Gupta, CAT expert, author, and IIM Bangalore alumnus has mentioned that CAT may be a terribly relative communicating and it will have an effect on everybody equally. Thus, you would like not to hassle regarding Reading Comprehension. However, you ought to understand the correct ways to handle the computer-based, particularly for the Reading Comprehension section.

Tip 1: Get used to the computer-based environment

Those who are not extremely aware of the computer-based testing ambient, start using computers at the earliest. The CAT has gone online doesn’t mean that the ideas needed to tackle the exam have modified. what’s needed is the ability to scan and solve queries whereas observing a display screen for an extended time.

For that, the most effective technique is to scan from the computer itself. Read e-papers and e-books so you are habituated reading long passages from the screen. Besides that notice, if you are able to extract the information when reading a prolonged passage or data.

Tip 2: Length of Reading Comprehension passages

In the computer-based test (CBT) format of CAT examination, specialists have found that the length of the passages for Reading Comprehension section is moderate so the candidates don’t need to scroll large passage. “Since reading long passages and repeatedly scrolling down isn’t easy the passages have gotten extremely shorter. Last year there was no passage which was longer than 600 words,” mentions Kudva.

So currently rather than worrying regarding the long passages, you have to specialize yourself in active Reading Comprehension from moderate length passages from computers.

Tip 3: Utilize the tools properly

In the CAT Exam and other major computer-based exams, an important tool that is widely used is Mark and Highlight. With the help of that, you can mark or highlight a particular section or a small part of the passage. While reading the passage, you can highlight the main part and note down relevant points in your scratch sheet. You can also check the questions first and when you read the passage and find out the portion appropriate for answering a question, mark it and then answer it. Try to utilize the marking and highlighting tools of the CAT exam. In this way you can not only find it comparatively easier to solve the Reading Comprehension passages but also the other sections as well.

One of the RC passages from CAT 2018:

“Everybody pretty much agrees that the relationship between elephants and people has dramatically changed,” [says psychologist Gay] Bradshaw. . . . “Where for centuries humans and elephants lived in relatively peaceful coexistence, there is now hostility and violence. Now, I use the term ‘violence’ because of the intentionality associated with it, both in the aggression of humans and, at times, the recently observed behavior of elephants.” . . .

Typically, elephant researchers have cited, as a cause of aggression, the high levels of testosterone in newly matured male elephants or the competition for land and resources between elephants and humans. But. . . Bradshaw and several colleagues argue. . . that today’s elephant populations are suffering from a form of chronic stress, a kind of species-wide trauma. Decades of poaching and culling and habitat loss, they claim, have so disrupted the intricate web of familial and societal relations by which young elephants have traditionally been raised in the wild, and by which established elephant herds are governed, that what we are now witnessing is nothing less than a precipitous collapse of elephant culture. . . .

Elephants, when left to their own devices, are profoundly social creatures. . . . Young elephants are raised within an extended, multitiered network of doting female caregivers that includes the birth mother, grandmothers, aunts and friends. These relations are maintained over a life span as long as 70 years. Studies of established herds have shown that young elephants stay within 15 feet of their mothers for nearly all of their first eight years of life, after which young females are socialized into the matriarchal network, while young males go off for a time into an all-male social group before coming back into the fold as mature adults. . . .

This fabric of elephant society, Bradshaw and her colleagues [demonstrate], ha[s] effectively been frayed by years of habitat loss and poaching, along with systematic culling by government agencies to control elephant numbers and translocations of herds to different habitats. . . . As a result of such social upheaval, calves are now being born to and raised by ever younger and inexperienced mothers. Young orphaned elephants, meanwhile, that have witnessed the death of a parent at the hands of poachers are coming of age in the absence of the support system that defines traditional elephant life. “The loss of elephant elders,” [says] Bradshaw . . . “and the traumatic experience of witnessing the massacres of their family, impairs normal brain and behavior development in young elephants.”

What Bradshaw and her colleagues describe would seem to be an extreme form of anthropocentric conjecture if the evidence that they’ve compiled from various elephant researchers. . . weren’t so compelling. The elephants of decimated herds, especially orphans who’ve watched the death of their parents and elders from poaching and culling, exhibit behavior typically associated with post-traumatic stress disorder and other trauma-related disorders in humans: abnormal startle response, unpredictable asocial behavior, inattentive mothering, and hyper-aggression.

[According to Bradshaw], “Elephants are suffering and behaving in the same way that we recognize in ourselves as a result of violence. . . . Except perhaps for a few specific features, brain organization and early development of elephants and humans are extremely similar.”

Question 1: The passage makes all of the following claims EXCEPT:

Options:

1. elephant mothers are evolving newer ways of rearing their calves to adapt to emerging threats.
2. the elephant response to deeply disturbing experiences is similar to that of humans.
3. human actions such as poaching and culling have created stressful conditions for elephant communities.
4. elephants establish extended and enduring familial relationships as do humans.

Question 2: Which of the following statements best expresses the overall argument of this passage?

Options:

1. Recent elephant behavior could be understood as a form of species-wide trauma-related response.
2. Elephants, like the humans they are in conflict with, are profoundly social creatures.
3. The relationship between elephants and humans has changed from one of coexistence to one of hostility.
4. The brain organization and early development of elephants and humans are extremely similar.

Question 3: Which of the following measures is Bradshaw most likely to support to address the problem of elephant aggression?

Options:

1. Funding for more studies to better understand the impact of testosterone on male elephant aggression.
2. The development of treatment programs for elephants drawing on insights gained from treating post-traumatic stress disorder in humans.
3. Studying the impact of isolating elephant calves on their early brain development, behavior and aggression.
4. Increased funding for research into the similarity of humans and other animals drawing on insights gained from human-elephant similarities.

Question 4: In paragraph 4, the phrase, “The fabric of elephant society . . . has(s) effectively been frayed by . . .” is:

Options:

1. an accurate description of the condition of elephant herds today.
2. a metaphor for the effect of human activity on elephant communities.
3. an exaggeration aimed at bolstering Bradshaw’s claims.
4. an ode to the fragility of elephant society today.

Question 5: In the first paragraph, Bradshaw uses the term “violence” to describe the recent change in the human-elephant relationship because according to him:

Options:

1. there is a purposefulness in human and elephant aggression towards each other.
2. elephant herds and their habitat have been systematically destroyed by humans.
3. human-elephant interactions have changed their character over time.
4. both humans and elephants have killed members of each other’s species.

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