CLAT 2020 Syllabus and Subject-Wise Analysis [Videos] By CLAT Consortium

CLAT 2020 Exam and Registration

Introduction

CLAT 2020 Syllabus: English Language

• Passages intended to test ability to understand and analyse text that is at 12th standard level.
• May be from various topics, including technical and scientific topics, but you will not need any prior knowledge of any specialised areas to understand or analyse the passages.
• Usually a passage will have one point, and arguments or statements that support or counter the idea presented in the main point – try and discern the main point, and see what arguments or statements are presented in support of, or to counter, the main point.
• Once you have figured out the main point of the passage, a simple way to extract usable information from the passage is to focus on : Who, What, Why, When, and Where – you do not have to memorise these points, but keeping them in mind when reading the passage will ensure you have a good grasp over its details, without having to memorise them.
• Pay attention to paragraph structure – usually, a change of paragraph is accompanied by a change in speaker, or a change in the view point being presented. This will help you find differences in viewpoint, or counter arguments more easily when a question asks you to do so. Similarly for words and phrases like ‘however’, ‘on the other hand’, ‘conversely’, etc.

CLAT 2020 Syllabus: Current Affairs and General Knowledge

• Questions intended to test depth of understanding of issues and events of significance,rather than mere fact- or trivia-based superficial knowledge.
• While the focus is on more recent and current events, questions may test you on historical information related to such events and significance, in order to better gauge your understanding of the causes of such current events.
• Questions may also relate to matters associated with the events mentioned in the passage – for a passage about a natural calamity for example, you may face questions not only about that natural calamity, but similar events in other parts of the world.
• Make sure you read the entire passage before you attempt the questions – while the answers to some questions may seem apparent to you, you would be able to pick up valuable clues about the answers to other questions by ensuring you read the entire passage first.
• Don’t worry about whether you will remember all the elements of the passage when you come to the questions – the idea is not to test your ability to memorise the passage and answer questions that test your recollection – but do make sure you have a good idea of the overall theme or point of focus of the passage, as this may help jog your memory about any related information you may have read or come across in your preparations.

CLAT 2020 Syllabus: Legal Reasoning

• One of the biggest differences in the pattern of the Legal Reasoning section of the UG CLAT 2020 over previous years is that the principle and facts will not be supplied separately to you – as such, the first thing you should do is read through the passage carefully, and identify the principles set out in it.
• Once you have done this, read through each question carefully to see if it relates to the same facts as are set out in the passage, or a separate set of facts, or, perhaps, the facts set out in the passage with some alterations.
• Now that you have both, the principle and the facts identified, try and break down the principle into smaller parts – for example, a principle may say “A person who operates a drone at a height in excess of 500 feet in a public place is guilty of nuisance.” In such a case, you should be able to identify the three requirements set out in the principle for nuisance – firstly, that the person in question should have been operating the drone, secondly, that that person should have operated the drone at a height in excess of 500 feet, and thirdly, that this should have occurred in a public place. Only if all three parts of this principle are satisfied by the facts can you assume that a person is guilty of nuisance.
• When breaking a principle down into its parts, be careful to pay close attention to what we call ‘OR’ and ‘AND’ conditions – the example we saw above had ‘AND’ conditions, that is, all three parts must be satisfied for a person to be held guilty of nuisance. On the other hand, if the principle were worded as follows: “A person who operates a drone at a height in excess of 500 feet or in a public place is guilty of nuisance.”, you would have one ‘AND’ condition, and one ‘OR’ condition. In this situation, for a person to be held guilty of nuisance, the following conditions must be satisfied: they should have been operating the drone, AND, such operation should be at a height in excess of 500 feet OR in a public place. These small changes would result in a big change in the outcome – in the first case, a person operating a drone at a height of 300 feet in a public place would not have been guilty of nuisance, but in the second case, that person would have been guilty of nuisance.

CLAT 2020 Syllabus: Logical Reasoning

• As you can well imagine, arguments are a very important part of studying law. Arguments are usually sets of facts or pieces of evidence (called ‘premises’) which support a ‘conclusion’. These premises and conclusions together form arguments, and arguments are at the heart of the Logical Reasoning section of the UG CLAT 2020.
• Given this, the first thing you should do when attempting a question in this section of the UG CLAT 2020 is to carefully identify the various premises and conclusions in the passage. Once you have done this, you will be better prepared to take on the questions.
• Now that you have identified the premises and conclusions in the passage, try and determine if there is an overall theme, point, or conclusion to the passage. This is important, not only because many questions will ask you to identify these, but also because they will give you a better understanding of the overall tone, theme, and parts of the passage. With this information at hand, you should be able to easily answer questions that ask you to identify the main theme or conclusion of the passage, as well as questions that ask you to identify arguments in support of, or against, the author’s arguments.
• Some passages may include more than one point of view, or more than one set of arguments, some of which may weaken or contradict each other. Identifying and separating these is very important, so that you know not only what the main conclusion is, but whether the passage has a main conclusion at all, or if it only presents different points of view.

CLAT 2020 Syllabus: Quantitative Techniques

• Since the Quantitative Techniques section of the UG CLAT 2020 differs from previous years’ papers in that it requires you to read a passage or analyse a set of graphical information before attempting a question, it is very important that you go through the passage provided, or the graphical information supplied to you, and list out (or underline) the information that is provided to you, and the information that you may need to answer the questions. As a simple example, a passage may provide the various speeds of trains, and the distance between two stations – in this case you know that you will probably need to calculate the time such trains may take to cover such distances.
• Again, since the Quantitative Techniques section of the UG CLAT 2020 follows the general trend of changes in the CLAT towards a more comprehension-based format, it is important that you read the passages and questions very carefully, so as to ensure you have understood the information supplied, and what exactly the question is asking of you. Bear in mind that the question setters would tend to move away from formulae-based questions towards more logic-based questions – this means that they are not only looking at your ability to conduct simple mathematical calculations, they are also looking for your ability to analyse the passages and graphical information.
• Quite often, a later question in any set of questions in the Quantitative Techniques section of the UG CLAT 2020 will require you to use some information that you may have calculated or derived in the course of answering a previous question. Since this is the case, it is important that you keep your rough notes and calculations neat and handy, so that you can quickly refer to such information when needed. Since the UG CLAT 2020 is, among other things, a test of your ability to answer questions efficiently, it would be a terrible waste of time if you had to hunt through your rough notes and calculations to find some vital piece of information.

CLAT 2020 Syllabus: Please visit the official CLAT Website for more Preparation Strategies and Sample Questions.