CLAT 2022 is coming!
The law aspirants are gearing up and are preparing for the five subjects which will decide whether they get to attend a top tier NLU.
Out of those five subjects, the one which gives the most opportunity to score and to make mistakes/lose marks is the English Language. This section is simple and complex at the same time.
How?
The subject demands a mastery of all grammar topics as well as a strong command over vocabulary. This section also needs practice papers to be solved every week so that the aspirant gets hold of every possible question type that can come in the exam.
When an aspirants does all this, as well as maintains a steady and strong reading speed, their chances of making it to a top NLU increase since most of these skills help in other sections as well because CLAT paper comes in English.
However, if somebody misses out on vocabulary or the grammar topics, their chances drop considerably even before the exam begins.
Therefore it is important to prepare well for this section.
How to prepare English Language for CLAT 2022
The English paper is one of the biggest sections and even with the new pattern, it has around 35-38 questions in the 150 marks paper.
Reading comprehension is the ability to process text, understand its meaning and integrate with what the reader already knows. It is all about how you process the text written and answer accordingly.
The word ‘comprehend’ literally means to understand and interpret the meaning of the paragraph. Every passage revolves around the central idea, thus it becomes important to identify the central idea which is implicit in the key sentences of the paragraph. The topic/heading of the passage is derived from this central idea only.
Steps to solve reading comprehension questions
- Step 1-firstly, read the questions carefully. This will provide you with the idea about what you have to search for in the paragraph.
- Step 2- secondly, read the passage in a quick manner and try to find the relevant answers of the questions read before.
- Step 3- thirdly, now when you have read the paragraph, read the questions again properly and try to answer the question. In this step you will be able to find the answer of direct questions and mark them in the paragraph
- Step 4- fourthly, read the unanswered questions carefully and read the relevant portion of the paragraph to find and interpret the answers.
- Step 5- fifthly, in order to answer the vocabulary question read the sentence in which the concerned word is used and try to interpret the meaning of the sentence with such word.
Things to keep in mind while solving reading comprehension questions
- Try to find out the main idea of the paragraph and understand the tone used by the author i.e. whether it is optimistic, pessimistic or informative.
- After reading the questions try to eliminate reading the irrelevant paragraphs.
- While reading the passage make a point of the specific details about the main characters.
- Try to devise a logical inference of the passage. This will help in answering the application based questions.
- Focus on the sentences containing vocabulary questions so as to understand their meaning.
- Improve the reading speed by practising within a stipulated time. It should take 7-8 minutes to read a passage of 500-800 words.
- Learn to summarise in your mind the main points of the passage.
Tips to prepare for the English Language Section
- Always solve the passages by setting the timer. Try to solve one passage maximum in 8-10 minutes.
- Vocabulary words initially look alien, but read thrice the paragraph where that word has been used, then use the elimination technique to reach the answer
- Always solve the question asking authors idea in the passage in the end, because by then you would have at least gone through the entire passage twice. It will be then easy to infer the answer
- When you will read the questions, read their options also very carefully because generally there will be two options which will be quite similar, so you would have to then struggle between those two options only to devise the answer, the other two options will automatically get eliminated
- Solve at least one full-length mock test every two days, this will help you to devise the time which you can give into each section according to your skills
- No need to mug up English Vocabulary, as the meaning of the word asked in the question can be inferred from the meaning of the passage
- Just keep a sharp eye while reading the passage, and look for the keywords of the questions in the passage.
First published on November 5, 2020.