Verbal Ability and RC: Evidence Over Instinct
What to master
This section tests reading stamina and precision: main idea, tone, inference, vocabulary in context, para jumbles, para summary, cloze, error spotting, idioms and fill-in-the-blanks. For RC, read the passage once for structure - the author's claim, the evidence, the turning point - and only then attack the questions.
Traps
- True but not stated. An option can be factually correct yet absent from the passage. Reject it.
- Extreme language. Always, never, all, only, must rarely survive into a correct RC answer.
- Outside knowledge. Answer from the passage, not from what you happen to know.
- Para jumble openers. The first sentence normally has no pronoun or definite article pointing backwards; find the sentence that introduces a noun in full.
- Tone words. "Critical" is not "negative"; "objective" is not "indifferent".
- Error spotting. Check subject–verb agreement, parallelism, prepositions and comparisons before rarer rules.
Rule of thumb
For every RC answer, locate the single line in the passage that supports it. If you cannot point to it, the option is a distractor.
Worked example
Passage line: "The policy reduced emissions but at a cost that few developing economies could sustain." The author's attitude is best described as (a) enthusiastic, (b) cautiously critical, (c) indifferent. The word "but" signals reservation and "few could sustain" signals a real objection, so (b) fits; (a) ignores the concession and (c) ignores the evaluation.