for all those RC-phobiacs ...

so CAT is approaching sooner then it seems... for simplicity sake I wud say it's 2 months to the C-day and its perfect time to start preparing and more importantly convincing urself that u have wot it takes to do it!!

ok disclaimers...
I don't claim that this would result in any certain results or anything, but if perceived in the desired manner this can lead to an increase in ur RC scores, especially in the really tough RC papers and u must be able to feel the difference soon after u try this method.
So, not wasting much webspace, a few assumptions...
1. ur RC preps b4 this point are most valuable and this procedure can help u supplement and rightly orient those preps.
2. even if ur not at all prepared from before, try this method ul be atleast confident if not anything else.
3. I am assuming a basic level of vocab and a decent level of grammer knowledge.

Well, so lets start by trying to see how we prepare for RC now.
We read newspapers, novels, magazines, we solve various other passages in a time frame as in mocks, FLTs other tests etc. and then later we try to analyse what went wrong.
Obviously something went wrong otherwise u wont be reading this. What is definitely wrong with practising reading on newspapers is the fact that in newspapers/novels the text is articulated in a manner so that it is lucid and easily comprehensible, the vocab is usually not hi-fi and the technical lingo pertaining to any subject is usually either very shallow or absent.
So, however hard we practise with this kind of material we can never get a feel of the real stuff for 3 simple factors are amiss in any novel/newspaper.
1. they are written in a non-complex manner.
2. they are always contextual.
3. they never take technical know-how as granted

while as we notice in any tough RC paper these three factors become the biggest hurdles the passage would typically either be
1. complex
2. non-contextual
3. with lotsa technical jargon of any subject (art, philosophy, science things ur not comfy with)
it can be a mixture of few of these attributes as well..
complex and non-contextual etc.

Now, we know the problem which basically is we are not practising on what is our weakness, we are just beating around the bush but not focussing on the problem area.
What we need to do as part of RC practise is to know what are the attributes of the passage that give us pain and then address them by tackling them upfront.
So, as we know passages are complex, non-contextual and with tech-jargon we have to start reading stuff which has all these features.
Typically the difference this stuff has with the stuff u normally read is that this stuff is extremely boring and therefore, no one reads it leave alone thinking about it, or trying to analyse it.
But, the good thing is that now only 2 months are left and we have found out that we basically suck at RC [ :D ] so as a last resort we have to try something radical or be ready to perish. Now, as perishing is not our cup of tea we will try hard and fight it out, right!!
So here goes the strategy that can be followed to overcome the 3 aspects I mentioned.
Find stuff on the following subjects:
Arts, philosophy, psychology, sociology/epistemology, politics, theology, literature, economics, science and basically anything u think of as tough and boring. It should be very boring I emphasize because it has a great effect on the learning process, if it's really boring then in order to just follow the stuff ul have to really concentrate hard on the text, this is an immediate outcome and something which will be a virtue later, if u can learn to focus hard on even the really sulky stuff then ur definitely one up on any RC exam.
It should pertain to something entirely new say french revolution or renaissance paintings or artists of belgium during the baroque age or something crappy, here the emphasis should be on comprehension & focus as well as trying to be familiar with the terminology. Why we are focussing on terminology is because without knowing the very basics of a subject, it's like ur trying to read a topic on ur area of expertise but ur vocab is quite poor so ur missing few words every sentence and hence although u can make out the rough idea still u can't really enjoy the subtlities of the text. While if ur really thorough with the vocab u can really get into the text and get the real feel of the subject, it really acts a confidence booster.
Analogously, when we are talking about a new subject arts for instance, even if we don't know what the text is about the knowledge of a few key terms here and there can really boost ur confidence when ur feeling lost. And once u can get a hold of the text that knowledge will really help u get a better understanding and comprehension. Now I am not saying that in two months u can be good at everything, definitely not. But, still it's better then reading newspapers/novels in any case. So try going one week for each of the topics u find frequently in CAT papers or as mentioned above, about half to one hour each day. It will definitely help u gain some perspective and a broader outlook on the passage.

After doing all this we can think of various strategies to adopt during the exams/tests/mocks, some suggest that when ur really bad at it you should attempt as many as possible. The logic is like, if my accuracy is 50 % so if I attempted 14 questions I would score 21 in the standard CAT pattern, while if I attempt 20 I would score 30, maintaining the same accuracy. So cut down some time on other sections and get a decent score in this one, if it's all it takes.

There can be lot many other strategies and you need to try out various options but one thing that's not going to work is trying to ignore the problem, we are not going to be satisfied with any B grade schools we want the best of the lot and our attempt should be at the best ones. For which it becomes imperative to score decently in all the sections. Which should be our aim.

I haven't talked about QA and DI in here because I haven't done a lot of research on them as they came naturally to me. While RC was my weakness so tried a lot to improve and came to think of this as a strategy and it's reasonably effective depending on how u use it.

As for QA and DI I would say that try to find out the problem areas and weather ur focussing on finding solutions or not. The biggest hurdle usually to improvment is the inability to figure out the weaknesses or the inability to figure out a appropriate solution. Think rationally and there always is a solution around.
Keep watching for more 'gyaan' on CAT preps and it would mostly be with the heading 'how to crack CAT in two months' .. ;-)

cheers guys...

feel free to post any queries...