CLAT is around the corner and with the board examinations about to end, a new crop of CLAT aspirants are in line to start their preparation. They may be a little late but not too late to make a mark in the examination and land in a good NLU.
Let’s take a look at the most popular questions
What has changed in CLAT?
What will CLAT 2020 look like?
What is the syllabus for CLAT 2020?
Which books to prefer for CLAT 2020 preparation?
Clarification on Maths and Legal Aptitude now?
How to prepare for CLAT 2020
Changes in CLAT 2020
What do we know so far? Let’s go through the updates which came our way from the press release, Prof. Mustafa’s Youtube channel and other sources.
The number of questions has been reduced from 200 to 120-150.
All questions will be comprehension based.
Questions from Quantitative Techniques, English, Current Affairs, Legal Reasoning and Logical Reasoning will be asked.
The paper will test the aptitude of the candidate and not the memory.
Maths is now Quantitative Techniques, the students can expect questions based on graphs, pie charts and tables.
Logical Reasoning has not been changed and it is still the same logical reasoning.
Legal Aptitude used to have a legal principle and problem, it has now become Legal reasoning. The students will not be asked maxims or case laws.
English has not gone many changes but all the questions will be based on comprehensions.
To read about all the changes in detail, click here.
CLAT 2020 Exam Date
CLAT 2020 will be held on 10th May 2020.
CLAT 2020 Syllabus
What remains unchanged?
Logical Reasoning: There is no news whatsoever about any change in the logical reasoning section per se. Therefore, it is safe to assume that the old syllabus for this section is intact.
Current Affairs: It has already been declared that Static G.K will not be asked, however, there were questions from current affairs in the past. Current affairs have turned into a full section.
English: The section has slightly been altered, the rest remains the same. All questions will be comprehension based. So they can still ask you the meaning of a certain word as long as they mention it in a passage above the question.
What has changed?
Legal Aptitude: The nomenclature of this section has changed to Legal Reasoning. It has also been revealed that there will be no requirement of legal knowledge to attempt the questions in this section. This section will also have passages, related to legal issues.
Maths: The smallest section of the exam has now become Quantitative Techniques. It is still unclear what the pattern of questions will be in this section. If we go with the pattern of other entrances that have Quantitative Aptitude, the syllabus might be similar to that of Maths but the type of questions will be completely different.
Books/Resources for CLAT 2020
Here’s a few things to make note of.
Before we get to the changed sections of the exam, we should talk about the books and resources best suited for the sections which are unchanged.
Since nobody will have a precedent to the new pattern, everybody should brush up on what remains unchanged and score the best they can, the rest of the paper will be a combination of preparation and luck.
Logical Reasoning
In order to prepare well and score good in this section, the candidate needs to practice as much as they can. No amount of theoretical understanding of this subject can ensure good marks in this section.
The candidates should refer the past year papers of CLAT to solve the different types of LR questions that they have asked till date.
Sample and Past year papers of LSAT, as well as AILET, should be solved since their logical reasoning section is comparatively tougher than CLAT.
To get a complete hold of LR, one can solve the book by S.Chand. It has questions from various competitive examinations and difficulty levels.
Current Affairs
The General Knowledge section has been replaced by a complete Current Affairs section. This means, there will be no static GK questions.
This also means that unlike the past, current affairs questions will be asked from the whole previous year. These questions need not be solely from the legal arena.
This section will also be comprehension based.
A thorough reading of a good national daily is highly advised and that notes be maintained for each day.
While reading, special attention to the editorial sections since they are based on the current affairs and polish vocabulary of the candidate.
One good magazine like Competition in Focus or Outlook can be referred on a monthly basis, to sum up, the affairs of the month.
Watching an hour of news daily to know about the daily events of the world is advised. Please do not waste time over prime time debates, instead, go for Doordarshan news or All India Radio News.
English
This section is pretty much the same as before with a small edit of solely comprehension based questions. Comprehensions were a part of this paper earlier as well, now they have covered all of it.
Read various articles and blogs on Business, Politics, Economics and Law to be familiar with the topics which may be a part of the comprehension in the exam.
Try to read faster, time your reading and make sure to retain most of what you read.
Solve the past year papers of LSAT and GMAT (Comprehension section only).
A good resource will be the LSAT and GMAT guides.
Legal Reasoning
Popular legal reasoning questions.
This section will be based on passages from recent legal/economic/social/ developments.
The meaning or message of the passage as a whole.
Reasoning with conditional (“if-then”) statements
Inferring what could be true or must be true from given facts and rules
Inferring what could be true or must be true from given facts and rules together with new information presented in hypotheticals
Recognizing when two statements are logically equivalent in the context.
How to prepare for CLAT 2020?
Practice the LSAT paper’s analytical reasoning section, analytical and deductive reasoning are similar in many ways. Many questions will overlap.
Solve the past year papers of GMAT and CAT, although their reasoning is way above the level of CLAT, scoring average in those papers will mean scoring good in CLAT. They have deductive as well as quantitative in their syllabus.
Take a look at this video for a basic understanding on ‘How to Prepare for CLAT’