CAT MBA Entrance Preparation

Welcome to CAT MBA Entrance Preparation. We will study VARC, work through an example, and practise using the course's learning material. Preparation pathway for CAT MBA Entrance Preparation with syllabus-based topic learning, question practice, revision and mock-test strategy. Current eligibility, dates and official pattern must be verified from the conducting authority. Sign in and use the study header to open your authorised course. Select this published lesson. Start Course Tutor with Auto audio on: it teaches continuously, answers a typed question, then resumes. Four question types cover almost the whole section. Main idea questions ask for the passage's central claim, and the correct option usually covers the whole passage rather than one striking paragraph. Inference questions ask what must follow, so the right answer is often cautiously worded while the wrong ones overreach. Read this passage. Advocates of open-plan offices argue that removing walls encourages conversation and therefore collaboration. Studies of firms that made the change have found something stranger. Face-to-face interaction fell, and electronic messaging rose sharply. One plausible explanation is that when privacy disappears, people manufacture it, and a screen is easier to hide behind than a wall. The finding does not show that open plans are always wrong. It shows that the mechanism their advocates rely on is not the one that operates. First question, main idea. An option saying open-plan offices reduce productivity goes further than the passage, which says nothing about productivity. An option saying open-plan offices should be abandoned is a recommendation the author explicitly declines in the last two sentences. The option capturing the passage is that the evidence undercuts the assumed mechanism behind open-plan offices without condemning them outright. Second question, inference. Which is supported? That employees in open-plan offices sought privacy through other means is supported, because the passage offers exactly that as its plausible explanation for the rise in messaging. That employees dislike their colleagues is not supported at all. Third question, tone. The author is neither hostile nor neutral. He corrects a common inference while refusing to overstate. Measured and corrective describes it; scathing and indifferent do not. Notice the pattern across all three. The correct answers were the cautious ones, and every tempting wrong answer was a slightly larger claim than the passage had earned. Which mistake would change the reasoning in this example? Choosing the true option rather than the supported one. Fix it by demanding that you can point at the words that force your choice. Rereading the passage for every question. Fix it with paragraph labels, which let you return to a single paragraph. Ask Course Tutor: please explain this step from the example. First question, main idea. An option saying open-plan offices reduce productivity goes further than the passage, which says nothing about productivity. Why does it follow? Add what you tried, so the explanation addresses your difficulty. Now try the source practice. Why are options containing the word always usually wrong in reading comprehension? Pause before the answer. The source answer is: because a short passage rarely establishes that something holds without exception, so an absolute claim usually exceeds the support given. Compare your reasoning as well as the result. If your response differs, return to the worked example and identify the step that needs correction. Explain the key idea in your own words, revisit any mistaken step, then continue to the next lesson. Use Stop to end Course Tutor when you finish.