Friday, July 8, 2011

Vocab Building Mantra.....an excerpt of excellence from PG !!


English is not a subject that you can gulp down in one go. Language skills cannot be built overnight, nor can the nuances of a language be downloaded into your mind inside packed classroom sessions. Here is a better way to progressively get better at English.

1. Vocabulary

(i) Check out their Homepage everyday. It is bound to add new words to your vocabulary.
(ii) Enroll for the Word of the Day newsletter. This will push words into your email Inbox everyday and force you to learn one new word and its usage everyday.
(iii) Whenever you come across a new word,  punch it into the site. Look at all the meanings of the word. Their collection of phrasal verbs is among the best. The CAT expects you to know multiple meanings of words. For example, if I punch in ‘home’, this is what I get: http://www.thefreedictionary.com/home. You now know the different ways the word ‘home’ could be used and you thought you knew the meaning of the word perfectly well.
(iv) Follow the website’s accounts on Twitter and Facebook for more updates.

b) http://dictionary.reference.com/: This gives you both a dictionary and a thesaurus to build your vocabulary with.
(i) Enroll for their ‘word of the day’.
(ii) Test yourself using some of the fun tests which are also useful at the same time. For example the day I wrote this article, the homepage had a test on the types of ‘Phobias’ — something that appears regularly in the FMS test.
(iii) Use the thesaurus feature to learn new words. Say, you come across the word ‘bedlam’. When you check out the thesaurus it shows that the word ‘bedlam’ is close in meaning to: ‘chaos’, ‘clamor’, ‘commotion’, ‘confusion’, ‘din’, ‘disquiet’, ‘disquietude’, ‘furor’, ‘hubbub’, ‘madhouse’, ‘maelstrom’, ‘noise’, ‘pandemonium’, ‘racket’, ‘shambles’, ‘tumult’, ‘turmoil’ and ‘uproar ‘. Our brains are so structured that we visualize words in groups. Now if you come across the word ‘racket’ somewhere, you will immediately relate it to ‘bedlam’!

(c) http://www.alphadictionary.com/goodword/today: A good dictionary for origins of words. Enroll for the ‘What’s the Good Word‘ emailer. For example, this is what it has to say about the word ‘Yankee’: “A British officer in 1789 suggested that Yankee comes from the Cherokee word eankhe, which means ‘slave’, ‘coward’. It might just as well come from a Native American pronunciation of English, ‘yengees’, which later became Yankees. Yankee could have been withdrawn from this word by back derivation. Most probably, however, it comes from Dutch nickname for Jan (John): Janke, where the Dutch ‘J’ is pronounced [y].”

d) Visit http://vocabmagik.com/. A good way to learn new words. I once spotted cartoon of a drunk Mr Bacchhan used to explain the word ‘bacchanalian’ (a drunken person) on this site.

2. Reading and Comprehension

a) Go to www.wikipedia.org. Go to the ‘featured content’ section and further to featured articles. You will find articles segregated by topic. Pick any random topic which you have absolutely no clue about, a different one each day (Architecture, Art, Chemistry, Economics), especially subjects you have never heard of and read the articles under that topic. This will increase the range of your vocabulary and get you up to speed for rapidly scanning unfamiliar topics.
b) CAT reading passages have in the past been picked up from The Guardian newspaper. Browse it daily. That is the kind of vocabulary level expected of you. Sign up for their free newsletters so that you keep getting emails and links from them. I also recommend The New York Times and The Times of India
c) Visit Google Scholar. Type in any keyword, say ‘mortgage’. It will throw up research papers and articles on the topic. One example — http://www.jstor.org/pss/2118254. You will need aspirin to go through the articles but your comprehension power will skyrocket if you persevere!

3. Grammar

a) An excellent site for Phrasal Verbs is: http://www.phrasalverbdemon.com/.
e) Check out the page on Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_grammar

Interact with other CAT aspirants
Well you are already here! There is no better site in India for clearing your verbal ability doubts thanhttp://www.pagalguy.com/forum/english-resources/.

Testing
There are plenty of websites which allow you to test yourself in short bursts under a timer. At least the two that I know of with a good quality of tests which can be taken on the go are www.complore.com andwww.tenaday.co.in.

General knowledge
1. News Enroll for for global and national newspapers (at least two each) and sign-up for their daily updates. This will keep you informed and up-to date about current events.
2. Views Subscribe to or browse through editorial content of newspapers for analysis and opinion of news —http://www.thehindu.com/opinion/editorial/
3. Business GK
Please follow http://www.businessworld.in/businessworld/businessworld/ and http://businesstoday.intoday.in/ and the business pages of your daily newspaper.

The ‘Lonely Planet’ of helpful websites to surf

Visit these websites on a regular basis, preferably in a scheduled manner. Set reminders on your mobile phone. Allot each website a day and remember to scan it on that day.
Suggested Schedule,

Everyday: http://www.pagalguy.com/. Especially the weekend reading digests :) . I find so many students completely unaware of changes in the MBA and business education world. And if you do not know anything about the MBA world which you are supposedly so passionate about — what will you know about the world outside?
Monday: http://totalgadha.com/ (Excellent for CAT preparation oriented articles).
Tuesday: http://www.mbauniverse.com/ (News and press releases related to MBA).
Wednesday: http://testfunda.com/ (Test Prep).
Thursday: http://www.rediff.com/getahead/cat.html (News, test-prep chats, etc).
Friday: http://www.coolavenues.com/ (MBA and career-related articles).

Subscribe! Subscribe! Subscribe!

Follow! Follow! Follow!