CAT 2025 Lesson : Sentence Insertion - Solving Strategies - I

1. Solving Strategies

Sentence Insertion questions test your verbal comprehension and logical reasoning ability. You have to understand the key message from the paragraph and find a suitable gap or connect for the given sentence using comprehension, logic, vocabulary and grammar. There are multiple techniques which you should combine to find the logical sequence. Before we learn techniques of fitting the given sentence, we need to understand how to get the key message of the paragraph itself.

Please go through the Jumbled Paragraph lesson before or after this lesson, the techniques enumerated there will also help you to improve your accuracy of Sentence Insertion questions. Solving the Reading Comprehension lesson will also help you a lot in learning about different genres (topics), tones and how to find the key message of a passage or paragraph.

1.1 Paragraph Structure

Understanding the key message of the paragraph will help you to identify the appropriate blank for the sentence. There are typically two types in which a paragraph will be structured – either we can understand the key message by focussing on the first one or two sentences (or first and last sentence), or we will get a clear idea after reading through the entire paragraph. Let's look at examples for both:

1.1.1 Paragraphs where the first (and last) sentences are most important

In such paragraphs, the first (and perhaps the second) sentence help us to clearly identify the context and the key message. It helps us to focus on these and identify the context before we read on. Re-reading these sentences will also help us get a clear understanding of the author's key message in this paragraph.

For instance,
If you were to plot the development of human civilization — defined by population size as well as economic and cultural output, among other factors — you would find that development is not linear but exponential. For tens of thousands of years, people lived in the same basic social organization. But then, around 10,000 years ago, everything changed: In a small period of time, hunter-gatherers settled into villages. Those villages then grew into cities, those cities into kingdoms, and those kingdoms into nation-states.
In this paragraph, the first sentence explains the context – human development is exponential, not linear – which is explained or justified in the rest of the paragraph.

For instance,
Mark has one of the most coveted jobs in television. As a senior commissioner at one of Britain’s biggest broadcasters, he controls a budget extending to the millions. And every day, a steady stream of independent television producers arrive at his desk desperate to land a pitch. At just 39, Mark is young to wield such power. After making his name as a programme-maker, he initially became a commissioner at a rival broadcaster before being headhunted five years ago. A string of hits later, he is now one of the industry’s biggest players.

In this paragraph, we get the author's premise from the first sentence itself (Mark's success at work) – the rest of the paragraph explains this in more detail.

We can also have paragraphs with the first and last sentence being the most important. Usually, the first sentence will give us the context and the last one provides an appropriate conclusion or a summary of the entire paragraph.

For instance,
If there were intelligent beings elsewhere in the universe, they'd share certain truths in common with us. The truths of mathematics would be the same, because they're true by definition. Ditto for the truths of physics; the mass of a carbon atom would be the same on their planet. But I think we'd share other truths with aliens besides the truths of math and physics, and that it would be worthwhile to think about what these might be.

In this paragraph, we get the context from the first sentence (intelligent beings everywhere will have some truths in common) and the last sentence (we can try and identify the common truths). Both these sentences help us identify the key message

For instance,
Writing in 1915, the philosopher and social theorist Max Weber observed: “The fortunate man is seldom satisfied with the fact of being fortunate. Beyond this, he needs to know that he has a right to his good fortune. He wants to be convinced that he ‘deserves’ it, and above all, that he deserves it in comparison with others … good fortune thus wants to be legitimate fortune.” Weber could easily have been writing about today. Fast-forward 100 years and the current political fetish for social mobility and meritocracy is clearly motivated by a similar societal yearning for “legitimate fortune”.

In this paragraph, we get the context from the first two sentences (fortunate people, i.e., those who are lucky or successful, want to know that they deserve it) and the last sentence (this is also true today).

1.1.2 Paragraphs where we get the key message only after reading it fully

In such paragraphs, the first (and perhaps the second) sentence may help us with the context, but there will be a narrative structure and we will get the key message only after reading the entire paragraph. Each sentence contributes facts or arguments on its own, and reading each sentence is required.

For instance
Through mental shortcuts known as “heuristics,” we often make snap judgments about other people—which can turn negative in certain circumstances. For instance, opinions about immigrants might be formed by negative stories on cable news, which tap into the “availability heuristic,” wherein we make our judgments based on immediately accessible or repetitious information. People who aren’t exposed to other information will start to form stereotypes about immigrant groups, which in some cases can be used to rationalize exploitation or discrimination. These kinds of psychological processes make it easier for us to demonize outgroups and engage in chauvinistic behavior, helping create the divides we live in today.

In this paragraph, we learn about heuristics in the first sentence, but we can infer the key message only after reading the entire paragraph – people make snap judgements about immigrants, forming stereotypical opinions and then discriminating against them. Every sentence takes the message forward to the final conclusion in the last sentence.

For instance,
What exactly is language? At first thought, it’s a continuous flow of sounds we hear, sounds we make, scribbles on paper or on a screen, movements of our hands, and expressions on our faces. But if we pause for a moment, we find that behind this rich experiential display is something different: the smaller and larger building blocks of a Lego-like game of construction, with parts of words, words, phrases, sentences, and larger structures still. We can choose the pieces and put them together with some freedom, but not anything goes. There are rules, constraints. And no half measures. Either a sound is used in a word, or it’s not; either a word is used in a sentence, or it’s not.

In this paragraph, the author explains the concept of language. We need to read the entire paragraph to understand the author's key message. This is especially true as the second sentence (language seems to be a continuous flow of sounds) is not the key definition, the true explanation comes later (after but is we pause...)

1.2 Identifying the key message

Your approach to understand the key message will change based on the type of paragraph. Focus on the first, second and last sentences as they will probably have more information than the remaining sentences. You can also re-red them once to validate the key message that you have gathered. If you find that each sentence adds more information, then you need to understand the entire paragraph and derive the key message (this may take a bit longer). Avoid summarising the key points in he second case – try and see what message the author is leading towards. Let's look at a few examples to learn how to find the key message.

For instance,
Perhaps the earliest antecedent of the vegetative metaphor can be found in the writings of Aristotle, who lived at a time of imperialism in ancient Greece. According to his ‘psychic hierarchy’, plants had only the most basic ‘nutritive’ faculty of soul. They could ‘go on living as long as they are able to take nourishment’ but had ‘no other potentiality’. Animals were distinguished from plants by their possession of the perceptive faculty, those senses that gave them awareness of the world around them. At the top of the hierarchy were those beings with the faculty of intellect ‘such as man and any other creature there may be like him or superior to him.’ Aristotle also saw the faculties as organised hierarchically within the individual, writing that the mind is naturally superior to the body.

In this paragraph, we can find the context (the origin of the vegetative metaphor) from the first sentence. The reason for the word vegetative (a person who is alive but in a coma-state) comes from Aristotle's theory which places living creatures in a hierarchy - plants are the lowest, then animals and then humans.

Key message – the vegetative metaphor can be traced back to Aristotle's psychic hierarchy, which categorises plants as the lowest of the living creatures as they only have nutritive needs.

For instance,
Imagine that soon, political technologists develop a machine called Clogger – a political campaign in a black box. Clogger relentlessly pursues just one objective: to maximize the chances that its candidate – the campaign that buys the services of Clogger Inc. – prevails in an election. While platforms like Facebook, Twitter and YouTube use forms of AI to get users to spend more time on their sites, Clogger’s AI would have a different objective: to change people’s voting behavior. Clogger could use automation to dramatically increase the scale and potentially the effectiveness of behavior manipulation and microtargeting techniques that political campaigns have used since the early 2000s. Just as advertisers use your browsing and social media history to individually target commercial and political ads now, Clogger would pay attention to you – and hundreds of millions of other voters – individually.

This paragraph is about a hypothetical AI machine called Clogger, which can be used to convince people to vote for one election candidate by using automated behaviour manipulation and microtargeting techniques (similar to the ones used by tech companies to target individuals through personalised ads).

Key message – the author describes a hypothetical political AI machine which can use behaviour manipulation and microtargeting on vast scale to convince people to vote for a particular candidate.

For instance,
The idea is intuitive: It is good to be alive; it is bad to die. Yet many, even most, resist this idea, and not just because they believe in an afterlife. Some of the resistance comes from the worries about what would happen to the world if we lived much longer: Overpopulation! Stagnation! Social security and pension crises! These are reasonable concerns: Something that appears to be good for the individual can have such bad effects for society that in the end it is good for no one. But more commonly, people simply appear to accept that death comes after a full life; they do not object to death, only untimely death.

The author starts with an intuitive idea (it is better to be alive than dead) and then explains how people resist this as they believe in a life after death, can imagine the problems that can be caused if no one dies. The actual view comes to us from the second sentence onward, with the last sentence helping us with the conclusion – most people do not want to live forever, but they do not want to die before they have lived a full life.

Key message – most people are okay with death after a full life (not an untimely death) because of their belief in an afterlife, life and death cycle being beneficial for society, etc.

For instance,
There are two distinct ways to be moderate: on purpose and by accident. Intentional moderates are trimmers, deliberately choosing a position mid-way between the extremes of right and left. Accidental moderates end up in the middle, on average, because they make up their own minds about each question, and the far right and far left are roughly equally wrong. You can distinguish intentional from accidental moderates by the distribution of their opinions. If the far left opinion on some matter is 0 and the far right opinion 100, an intentional moderate's opinion on every question will be near 50. Whereas an accidental moderate's opinions will be scattered over a broad range, but will average to about 50.

The context becomes clear in the first sentence – people can be moderates (opposite of extreme) in two ways, accidentally or on purpose. The accidental moderates have views which fall all over the spectrum, but average to 50. This means that their views are moderate only when combined, and they can have some extreme views also. The intentional moderates intentionally choose positions that are moderate (midway) on every topic. We can also infer that the author is focussing on intentional moderates, as most of the paragraph describes them.

Key message – intentional moderates are people who deliberately choose the middle path or opinion on any topic.

For instance,
We live in an age of unprecedented technological advance, and this applies nowhere more than to the field of war. From hyper-sonic missiles and nanotechnology, through space warfare using satellite-based lasers, to biologically-enhanced soldiers, barely a week goes by without news of a new technology that will change warfare forever. Particularly in the West, we are fascinated by how technology will give us the edge in war. Possibly because it always has. From weighted spears, to ironclads, to the hydrogen bombs and drone swarms—the West and its antecedents have almost always brought greater levels of technology to the battlefield. And for 500 years, if not longer, this has enabled the West eventually to win most wars.

The context is clear from the first sentence – technological advances in war. The author focuses on Western countries, stating that they have consistently tried to improve war technology, and have won most wars with their superior technology. Key message – the West has consistently focussed on advanced war technologies, which has helped them win most wars.

For instance,
The decline of traditional artistic media has helped to pull the rug out from under us. Artists have chipped away at, and sometimes abandoned wholesale, the conventions and boundaries that previously oriented us. Take painting, a medium that was long governed by conventions so obvious that it would have seemed silly to list them: a painting involves paint applied to a surface, presented so that the representational content is the right side up and facing away from the wall, and such that the painted surface is to be preserved for future appreciation. But artists have toyed with this model: Georg Baselitz makes paintings whose content is to be presented upside down; Fiona Banner made a painting whose primary marked surface is displayed facing the wall; Saburo Murakami made paintings whose paint was designed to flake away over time; and Gerald Ferguson made paintings that the purchaser is authorised to repaint if they wish to perform aesthetic ‘maintenance’.

The authors opinion (that the decline of traditional artistic media is bad) is clear from the first sentence. Pull the rug from under us means removing important support. The author holds artists responsible for this. The author explains the changes with multiple examples of paintings – placed upside down, displayed facing the wall, paintings that will flake away or can be repainted over by the buyer.

Key message – traditional artistic media is no longer used, with artists changing or abandoning the conventional media.

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