VARC guide, section 3

Reading comprehension: read for the argument

Read for the author’s argument, not for facts. Most CAT RC questions ask what the author thinks, implies or would accept, and the wrong options are built from the passage’s own words bent out of shape.

How to read a passage

  1. First paragraph: what is the topic, and what question or problem does it raise?
  2. Every paragraph: give it a job in your head, such as claim, example, counterpoint or conclusion.
  3. Pivot words: after but, however, yet, although, in fact, rather, the author’s real view usually follows.
  4. Tone: neutral, critical, sympathetic or sceptical? CAT authors are rarely extreme.
  5. At the end: say the main point to yourself in one sentence before opening the questions.

The four kinds of wrong option

Extreme
always, never, only, entirely, proves.
Out of scope
true in real life, but not said or implied in the passage.
Distorted
uses the passage’s words but changes their meaning or reverses a cause and effect.
Half-right
the first half fits, the second half does not.

Question types and how to answer them

TypeWhat it asksHow to answer
Main idea or primary purposeThe passage as a wholePick the option that covers every paragraph, not just one
Specific detail“According to the passage…”Go back to the line; match the meaning, not the words
Inference“It can be inferred…”, “suggests”Must follow from the text with no extra assumption
Author’s view“The author would most likely agree…”Match the author’s own stance, not views the author reports
EXCEPT / NOTAll options but one are stated or supportedCheck each option against the text and strike it off
Purpose of a detail“The author mentions X in order to…”Ask what job that sentence does in its paragraph
ToneThe author’s attitudeUsually measured (critical, cautious, appreciative); extreme tones are rarely right
ApplicationA new situation that parallels the argumentMatch the logic, not the topic

Worked passage 1: history

Original, about 290 words.

Passage

For most of history, towns kept their own time, set by the moment the sun stood highest over the local church or town hall. A traveller heading west found his watch running ahead at every stop, and few people minded, because few people travelled far.

The railways changed that. A timetable listing dozens of local times invited missed connections and, worse, collisions on single-track lines. Railway companies therefore adopted a single “railway time” for their own operations, and the towns along their lines slowly, sometimes grudgingly, followed.

It is tempting to tell this as a story of simple progress, in which reason triumphed over provincial habit. But the resistance deserves a fairer hearing. For many townspeople, solar time was not a habit but a fact: noon was when the sun was highest, and a clock that said otherwise was simply wrong. Some public clocks were even given two minute-hands, one for local time and one for railway time, a compromise that respected both the new order and the old.

What finally settled the matter was less the force of argument than the weight of infrastructure. Once telegraph lines could carry time signals instantly, and once schools, factories and courts arranged their days around train arrivals, keeping local time grew costly for anyone who tried. Standard time did not win because people came to believe it was truer; it won because living by any other time became inconvenient. The distinction matters, for it suggests that many conventions we now treat as natural were adopted not through persuasion but through dependence.

  1. 1

    The passage is primarily concerned with:

    1. (a)describing how the telegraph made accurate timekeeping possible
    2. (b)arguing that standard time spread because resisting it grew costly, not because people were persuaded
    3. (c)criticising townspeople who refused railway time
    4. (d)explaining why solar time is more accurate than standard time
    Show answer

    (b). It covers all three paragraphs: the change, the fair hearing for resisters and the cost-not-persuasion conclusion. (a) is one detail; (c) reverses the author’s sympathetic tone; (d) is a distortion, since only the townspeople believed solar time was “truer”.

  2. 2

    The author mentions clocks with two minute-hands in order to:

    1. (a)prove that railway time was technically superior
    2. (b)show that the change was contested and that communities tried to accommodate both systems
    3. (c)mock the confusion caused by local time
    4. (d)indicate that railway companies forced towns to change their clocks
    Show answer

    (b). The sentence calls the clocks a compromise that respected both orders. (a) and (d) are out of scope; (c) clashes with the author’s respectful tone.

  3. 3

    The author would most likely agree that:

    1. (a)conventions that feel natural today may owe their dominance to practical lock-in rather than to their merits
    2. (b)solar time should be restored because it follows the sun
    3. (c)railway companies deliberately suppressed local time to control towns
    4. (d)the adoption of standard time shows that reason eventually defeats habit
    Show answer

    (a). It restates the last sentence. (d) is the “tempting” story the author qualifies; (b) and (c) are never claimed.

  4. 4

    According to the passage, all of the following helped standard time spread EXCEPT:

    1. (a)the instant transmission of time signals
    2. (b)institutions arranging their schedules around train arrivals
    3. (c)the risk of collisions on single-track lines
    4. (d)a law requiring every clock to show railway time
    Show answer

    (d). No law is mentioned. The other three are all stated.

Takeaway. Paragraph jobs here are: the change, the fair hearing, the real cause. Once you have those three labels, every question is a matter of matching an option to one of them.

Worked passage 2: humanities

Original, about 280 words. IMS rated passages like this difficult in CAT 2025, among them ones on electronic music and on “place” in literature: abstract arguments about art or language with few concrete examples. Read it at the same 4-minute pace, marking the qualifiers.

Passage

Translators are often praised for being faithful, as if a good translation were a pane of clear glass through which the original could be seen undistorted. The metaphor flatters originals and is unfair to translators. Every language divides the world differently: one has a single word for blue, another insists on separate words for light and dark blue; one marks whether a speaker saw an event or only heard about it, another leaves the matter vague. A translator cannot carry these distinctions across intact, and must decide, sentence by sentence, which to keep and which to let go.

Seen this way, a translation is less a copy than an interpretation, and its choices reveal the translator as surely as a performance reveals a pianist. Two renderings of the same poem can differ more than two poems by different authors, and readers who compare them often discover what the original was doing only by noticing where the versions disagree.

None of this means that anything goes. A translator who smooths away every strangeness, turning a difficult foreign text into comfortable domestic prose, has also made a choice, usually the choice to flatter the reader rather than inform them. The best translations, on this view, are not invisible but honest: they let the reader feel the distance between two languages instead of pretending it is not there. Fidelity, if the word is to keep any meaning, should describe loyalty to the experience of reading the original, not to its dictionary meanings.

  1. 1

    The passage is primarily concerned with:

    1. (a)arguing that translation is impossible
    2. (b)recasting fidelity in translation as loyalty to the experience of the original rather than to word-for-word equivalence
    3. (c)showing that some languages are richer than others
    4. (d)defending translators who make difficult texts easy to read
    Show answer

    (b). It joins all three paragraphs: languages differ, translation is interpretation, and fidelity should mean loyalty to the reading experience. (a) is extreme, since the author never says translation fails; (c) misreads the colour example; (d) reverses the third paragraph.

  2. 2

    The comparison with a pianist suggests that:

    1. (a)translating requires musical training
    2. (b)a translation, like a performance, carries the interpreter’s own choices
    3. (c)translations are inferior to originals
    4. (d)readers should listen to poetry aloud
    Show answer

    (b). The pianist line says the choices “reveal the translator”. (a) and (d) take the analogy literally; (c) is a judgement the author never makes.

  3. 3

    The author would most likely criticise a translation that:

    1. (a)keeps some unfamiliar expressions from the original
    2. (b)reads like comfortable modern prose even where the original is deliberately strange
    3. (c)differs noticeably from another translation of the same text
    4. (d)explains its hardest choices in footnotes
    Show answer

    (b). Smoothing away strangeness is exactly the choice the author says flatters the reader. (a) and (d) describe the “honest” translation the author praises; (c) is what the author expects of good translations.

  4. 4

    Which of the following, if true, would most weaken the author’s argument?

    1. (a)Readers can rarely tell which of two translations is closer to the original
    2. (b)Languages differ in how they divide colours
    3. (c)Expert comparisons of different translations of the same poem usually find them nearly identical in content and tone
    4. (d)Some translators are also poets
    Show answer

    (c). The argument leans on translations differing widely (“more than two poems by different authors”); if they were nearly identical, the claim that translation is interpretation would weaken. (a) fits the author’s view, (b) is one of the author’s own premises and (d) is irrelevant.

Takeaway. Humanities passages hide the author’s view in qualifiers: “less a copy than”, “none of this means”, “if the word is to keep any meaning”. Mark them on the first read. For a “weaken” question, find the claim the argument depends on, then pick the option that contradicts it.

Practice passage 3: economics

9 minutes.

Passage, timed

When a popular good is priced below what buyers are willing to pay, something other than price decides who gets it. Often that something is a queue. Queues look fair because they ignore wealth: a billionaire waits in the same line as a student. Economists point out, however, that queues ration by a different currency, namely time, and time is not distributed equally either. A shift worker who cannot leave her job pays far more to stand in line than a retiree with a free afternoon.

Queues also waste what they collect. A higher price transfers money from buyers to the seller, who can use it; an hour spent waiting simply disappears. For this reason many economists favour auctions or flexible pricing for scarce goods, arguing that these allocate items to those who value them most while turning the cost of waiting into revenue.

Yet the preference for queues is not merely naive. People often accept a queue precisely because it signals that a good is not for sale to the highest bidder, and they resent pricing that seems to exploit a moment of scarcity, such as a taxi fare that triples during a flood. A society’s choice between price and queue is therefore partly a choice about which kinds of goods it wants money to decide.

  1. 1

    Which best states the main point?

    1. (a)Queues are always fairer than prices
    2. (b)Queues ration by time, which is costly and unevenly spread, yet people may still prefer them for some goods because of what they signal
    3. (c)Auctions should replace all queues
    4. (d)Economists ignore fairness
    Show answer

    (b). It covers all three paragraphs; (a), (c) and (d) are extreme or unsupported.

  2. 2

    According to the passage, a key inefficiency of queues is that:

    1. (a)they favour the wealthy
    2. (b)the time spent waiting benefits nobody
    3. (c)sellers earn too much
    4. (d)they cannot handle large crowds
    Show answer

    (b). “An hour spent waiting simply disappears”; (a) reverses the passage.

  3. 3

    The taxi example is used to:

    1. (a)show that flexible pricing is common
    2. (b)illustrate why people resent price-based allocation during scarcity
    3. (c)prove that queues fail in emergencies
    4. (d)argue that taxis should be regulated
    Show answer

    (b). The example follows “they resent pricing that seems to exploit a moment of scarcity”.

  4. 4

    The author’s attitude to economists’ preference for auctions is best described as:

    1. (a)dismissive
    2. (b)wholly supportive
    3. (c)appreciative but qualified
    4. (d)indifferent
    Show answer

    (c). The author reports the argument fairly, then adds “Yet the preference for queues is not merely naive”.

Practice passage 4: science

9 minutes.

Passage, timed

In the past two decades, attempts to repeat well-known experiments in psychology and medicine have often produced weaker results than the originals, or none at all. This “replication crisis” is frequently presented as a scandal, and in part it is: some findings rested on small samples, flexible analysis and a publishing system that rewarded surprising results over careful ones.

But the crisis is also evidence that science’s self-correcting machinery works, if slowly. A failed replication is a result in its own right; it tells researchers which effects are fragile and which methods mislead. The reforms that followed, such as declaring hypotheses before collecting data and publishing studies whatever their outcome, would not have been adopted without the embarrassment of failures.

The more troubling lesson concerns the public. People who hear only that “studies don’t replicate” may conclude that no study can be trusted, which is the wrong inference. The right response to unreliable findings is not to discard evidence but to weigh it: to prefer large, repeated and pre-registered studies over single striking ones. Scepticism, used well, is a sorting tool, not a reason to stop sorting.

  1. 1

    The author regards the replication crisis as:

    1. (a)proof that science is unreliable
    2. (b)partly a genuine problem and partly evidence that science’s correction works
    3. (c)an exaggeration by critics
    4. (d)a problem confined to medicine
    Show answer

    (b). “In part it is” a scandal, “but” also evidence of self-correction; (a) is the public’s wrong inference.

  2. 2

    Which reform does the passage mention?

    1. (a)Larger research budgets
    2. (b)Declaring hypotheses before collecting data
    3. (c)Banning surprising results
    4. (d)Replacing journals with blogs
    Show answer

    (b). Stated in paragraph 2.

  3. 3

    “A sorting tool, not a reason to stop sorting” implies that:

    1. (a)scepticism should lead us to reject most studies
    2. (b)scepticism should help us rank evidence by reliability rather than abandon it
    3. (c)only scientists should be sceptical
    4. (d)all studies are equally reliable
    Show answer

    (b). The last paragraph says to weigh evidence, not discard it.

  4. 4

    The author would most likely say that a single dramatic study showing a large effect:

    1. (a)should be trusted because it is surprising
    2. (b)deserves less weight than several large, pre-registered studies
    3. (c)should be ignored entirely
    4. (d)proves the crisis is over
    Show answer

    (b). The author prefers “large, repeated and pre-registered studies over single striking ones”; (c) is too extreme.