Official Verbal Ability thread for CAT 2010

[abhishek]

Hi guys, I have started Official Ability thread for CAT 2010. Please post your doubts and questions in verbal section.

The topics are

English Grammar, Sentence Correction, Para-Jumbles, Critical Reasoning, Fill in the blanks and last but not the least, Reading Comprehension.

[sony]

That's cool. Let me start with tenses.

Present Continuous Tense
She is dancing.

Past Continuous Tense
She was dancing.

Future Continuous Tense
She will be dancing.

Present Perfect Continous Tense
She has been dancing.

Past Perfect Continuous Tense
She had been dancing.

Future Perfect Continuous Tense
She will have been dancing.

Present Perfect
She has danced.

Past Perfect
She had danced.

Future Perfect
She will have danced.

[maria]

The words like superior, inferior, senior, junior, prior, anterior and posterior take 'to' instead of 'than'.

Example : Geeta is superiorr to Sita in intelligence.

Do not use 'less' when 'fewer' is required. 'Less' can refer to quantity only, whereas 'fewer' denotes numbers. Examples
He was advised to drink less tea.
There are no fewer than 100 students present in the classroom.

'Few' is negative and equivalent to 'not many' or 'hardly any' whereas 'a few' is positive and equivalent to 'some'

I need a few things from the store.
Few people are going to arrive early.

[omkumar]

Correct the sentence:

A number of my old classmates is coming to the reunion, but the number of impdiments to my travelling to Arakansas next week are quite large.


Please see the next post for its answer.

[omkumar]

The correct sentence is :

A number of my old classmates are coming to the reunion, but the number of impediments to my travelling to Arkansas next week is quite large.

"A number of" is an idiomatic expression that takes a plural verb.
"The number of" is singular.