Verbal Reasoning gives you a short passage — a paragraph or two of prose — followed by a series of statements. For each one you decide True, False or Cannot Say, using only what the passage actually says. 'True' means the passage supports it; 'False' means the passage contradicts it; 'Cannot Say' means the passage simply does not address it either way, whatever your own knowledge might suggest. The trap is that Cannot Say statements are usually written to sound plausible — they fit what you'd expect to be true — and False statements are often close paraphrases of the text with one word quietly reversed. You have to re-check the passage rather than trust your memory of it, because the whole test is designed to catch you reasoning from assumption instead of evidence.
Why airlines test it
This measures whether you can hold a set of stated facts in mind and reason only from them, refusing to pad the gaps with what 'probably' applies. Aviation documents are written to be read exactly this way — a NOTAM, a limitation or a company procedure states precisely what it states, no more, and a reader who quietly extends it with a reasonable-sounding assumption can act on information that was never actually given.
In the cockpit
You read documents like this dozens of times a trip: NOTAMs, METARs and TAFs, MEL entries, company procedures. Each one has a defined scope, and the discipline this test rewards is the same one that keeps you from assuming a document covers something it doesn't mention.
For example: a NOTAM states that Runway 09L is closed for construction between 2200 and 0500 local. It says nothing about the parallel taxiway. Reading 'Runway 09L closed' and concluding the adjacent taxiway is also closed is exactly the Cannot-Say error this test is built to catch — the NOTAM doesn't say that, and treating it as if it does could put you planning a taxi route around a restriction that doesn't exist, or missing one that does.
How to practise
Practise with Verbal Reasoning and treat every statement as a claim you must verify against the text, not against what you already believe. Re-read the specific sentence the statement is drawing on before you answer, watch for absolutes ('always', 'never', 'all') that the passage doesn't actually support, and get comfortable choosing Cannot Say — a confident guess through an unstated detail costs you more than admitting the passage didn't say.
Air France Cadets candidates meet this discipline in the PSY1 day's speed-reading test — French texts, nuance-trap options, answers strictly from the passage — recreated in English in ENAC Lecture de Textes. Their pre-selection sorts words instead of reading them, in ENAC Word Boxes: empty boxes with no labels, words arriving one at a time, and each word clicked into the box it belongs with before its time runs out. What a box is for exists only in the words already in it, and each box ends with the word that names the whole group. The ENAC Test Preparation course sets out the technique for each.