CLAT 2021

CLAT 2020 had 19,500 words combining all five sections which makes the paper time bound
and exhausting to read which could only be tackled by thorough practice. Roadmap to CLAT
2021 could only be made after completely analyzing CLAT 2020 question paper and as I’ve
been allotted English and Legal Reasoning, my analysis would be of those two sections only.

English –

Clat is an English based paper and though talks about introducing vernacular language as a
medium have been brought forth time and again we can’t negate the importance of this section as
almost 75% of the paper is directly based on your command on this language, this section mainly
comprises of vocabulary, comprehension and grammar, another important aspect of this section
is speed reading which is one the most important criteria for qualifying CLAT.

An average person has a reading speed of 200 to 300 words per minute without losing
comprehensive abilities, which is a bit low when you’re preparing for a competitive exam,
reading speed could be increased by various methods most effective of which is pointing and
reading, in which one reads the words he points in a line, increasing wpm to around 500 in a
weeks’ time, another common mistake which should be avoided is subvocalization, where one
pronounces the words in his subconscious mind while reading which drags down reading speed,
speed reading also includes reading multiple words at a time, prolonged reading while preparing
would also increase reading and comprehensive abilities over time, a reading speed of 550 to
650 words per minute prior to D-Day would be highly beneficial as at times we tend to re-read
passages and stress could also decrease reading speed , therefore a speed of 600 wpm puts the
candidate in a comfortable space as despite all these hurdles the candidate would be able to
maintain a speed of 400-450 wpm.

CLAT 2020 had 5 comprehension based passages of 431, 316, 466, 304 and 453,433 words each
excluding the questions which were based on them while entire section comprised of 3895
words. Questions were inference based mainly focusing on what the author asked, parts of
speech (noun, pronoun, and adjectives), figures of speech (simile, metaphor, irony, kenning etc),
synonyms, idioms and phrases and vocab based questions. One should ideally spend around 25-
35 minutes in this section.

Building strong vocab helps in every section of the paper as it increases your comprehension
skill for which Word Power Made Easy by Norman Lewis has been a go to book by many of my
peers as it takes around two months to complete and is more than sufficient for an exam like
CLAT because unlike previous years this time vocab would be based on these paragraph itself so
it would be easier to infer them.
Reading comprehension could only be tackled by solving as many questions as one could,
starting from the basic level to CAT level questions gradually, to get an idea about this section
the candidate should start by solving previous year CLAT questions papers and analyze them,
which would get him to understand the difference between an inference based or a direct
questions, later on moving to questions for ssc or cgl examinations and then to CAT, GRE or
GMAT based questions. Reading good novels and newspaper also helps in honing
comprehensive and vocab based skill, a set of 5 paras a day ranging from 2 easy ones, one
moderate level, and 2 CAT based reasoning paragraphs should be ideal in the first month of
preparation, later on switching to CAT, GMAT based questions completely with mocks to get a
mixed bag of easy and difficult questions which would help in complete stratification of the topic
(1000 RC is a CAT based reading comprehension module which would be of tremendous help).

.Questions based on synonyms and antonyms, idioms and phrases, fill in the blanks,
paraphrasing etc could be done by solving books like Wren & Martin and previous year question
papers, there are various websites which offer free grammatical questions which could be solved
twice a week to be thorough with it which would help in AILET and OLETs’ as Clat now
focuses mainly on para based questions.

On an average 1 hour a day should be allotted to English

 15 minutes for vocab (word power made easy, newspaper, articles, and journals).
 30-45 minutes for solving 5 comprehension based questions gradually increasing it to 7
or 8 comprehension based question (25-35 questions a day).
 Analyzing answers.
 Learning idioms and phrases and figures of speech alongside normal preparation once or
twice a week.

English is one of the easiest and highest scoring section of CLAT, with a reading speed of 500
wpm and good comprehensive skills one could easily score 24+ in English with 2 to 3 months of
thorough preparation in 25 minutes of sitting in the exam.
Legal Reasoning-

Legal reasoning is also a form of English comprehension, the only difference being instead of
general English it has questions based on legal principles, though Clat Consortium said that no
prior information about any legal principle is required for a 12th passed student to appear for Clat,
we still find questions based on Hicklin test, Force Majeure, Polluters Pay Principle, Strict
liability, Article 20, having no information about these principles won’t be an issue at all as they
do mention the principles indirectly in the paragraphs but knowing about them would only
increase your speed and understandability of those questions reducing the margin of error.

One other major difference is the fact that earlier consortium used to give direct principles when
they had principle fact based questions but since they have changed the pattern, principles are
embedded in the question itself and at times one could overlook it.

Preparation should be started by reading Basic Torts, Remedies under Tort, Constitutional
knowledge, Preamble, Fundamental Rights, DPSP, Civil Law( contract, agreement, proposal,
consent, capacity to contract) , Criminal Law ( Breach of duty and Trust, Essentials to crime and
criminal misappropriation etc), Family Law, Consumer Protection Acts, Legal Maxims

All these could be dealt with by books like LA&LR by AP Bharadwaj, Coaching materials and
free online materials.

One should initially start by solving previous year CLAT and AILET questions, just by solving
them one would be well versed with this sections as the candidate would have gone through 400
500 questions which is more than enough to get the basic understanding of this section.

Solving 500-700 questions would take around 15 – 20 days (35 questions a day) which is ideal as
CLAT and AILET have that number of questions in a set. After solving simple principle fact
based questions the candidate shall move on to paragraph based questions, paragraph based
questions are different from simple fact based questions on two major fronts, first each paragraph
would consist of two to three different principle, so where the candidate earlier was focused on
one principle per question now has different principles and different questions arising out of
them at once which can become confusing, second big hurdle is the length of questions itself,
reading paragraphs so long causes fatigue which results in loss of concentration which could
only be overcome by solving as many questions as possible.

Ideal preparation for this section would include;

 Knowledge about various laws.

 Previous year questions.
 CLAT 2020 sample papers, sample sections and question paper.
 Learning legal maxims ( 30-50 most important ones)
 35 questions per day till Clat or 5 sets of questions.
Reasoning –

Reasoning consists of two sections Analytical and Critical reasoning.

Analytical reasoning could be practiced by solving previous year questions and Analytical
reasoning by R.S. Aggarwal, separate sets of questions like Blood Relation, Direction test, Close
relation test etc could be practiced in sets of 15 questions a day.

Clat Consortium has mainly emphasized on checking the comprehensive skills of a candidate
which has reduced the weightage of analytical reasoning as the idea is to get better students to
NLUs who have competence in reading texts and inferential reasoning.

Critical reasoning mainly comprises questions like, strengthening weakening of arguments,

inference of author, drawing conclusion, finding assumption etc. A critical reasoning argument is
mainly divided into premise and conclusion and most questions are solved mainly on the
identification of these premises and conclusion and it’s not necessary that the come in an order,
critical reasoning again can only be honed by solving as many questions as one could, starting by
solving questions from R.S Aggarwal and then moving on to GMAT questions.

35 question per day giving an hour daily to this section is ample enough.