GMAT

What Is The Right Way To Attempt Parajumbles In CAT?

A few brief strategies to tackle Para jumbles.

1) First, read the sentences and try to comprehend what the central idea or theme of the paragraph is.

2) More often than not, the opening sentence is a vague generalization. The easiest method to solve PJs is to identify the opening statement and eliminate the options.

3) Another way of making the job easier is to identify Mandatory Pairs. There will be various ways in which two sentence are inter-connected. We have to identify these and proceed with the elimination of irrelevant options. The most common links are:
   (i) Lists
  (ii) Examples and other follow ups.
  (iii) Connecting words such as ‘hence’, ‘therefore’, ‘thus’ etc.
  (iv) Continuation of an idea.

4) The next step is to identify the last statement. Generally, identifying the last sentence is easier because we can apply the strategies of solving a para-completion to identify these. The last statement should conclude the paragraph, must be logically connected to the entire paragraph and should not be abrupt.

5) The fastest way of solving any problem is to use logic and smart-work. Eliminate the options, work around the statements. There is no alternative of focus. If you can understand the paragraph, you are bound to get it right.

Strategies:

1) The 5W Approach
2) The beginning and the end
3) The flow of Ideas
4) Chronology
5) Your Brain and Logic
6) Looking out for the clues in a paragraph, there can be many types
7) Demonstrative pronouns
8) Acronyms and Abbreviations
9) Structure
10) Option Elimination

The 5W approach refers to the 5 questions that you should ask yourself while reading the PJ. These are:

What: What does that pronoun refer to? what is the main idea? what is the structure? what is the author trying to say?

Why: Why is this option wrong? Why the sudden transition? Why does this order make sense?

When: When did the event mentioned in the paragraph happen? When did the author choose to give an example? What is the chronology?

Who: Who is that He, She, They, etc in the paragraph?

Where: Where do the events take place? Where do these acronyms come from? What do they mean?

If you can answer these, you finally have the gist of the paragraph and you don’t even need the options to mark the right answer.

Why does this work?

It’s simple. If you can answer the fundamental questions on any text, it implies you understand it completely. And comprehension is the key to all VA questions.

Back to basics – Read the question very, very carefully.