How to prepare for CLAT Exam Current Affairs section by Harsh Gagrani

CLAT Current Affairs preparation tips to stick by in these three months

• Candidates should make a note of the fact that the Current Affairs of next three months will be even more important than the Current Affairs of last three months. They should study for both properly while preparing for CLAT, but give more importance to February-April Current Affairs.

• Candidates should ensure that they devote 40 to 60 minutes to Current Affairs daily.

• It is advised that candidates spend at least 20 minutes revising Current Affairs daily while preparing for CLAT. Students often find that a question looks familiar but are not able to pinpoint the exact answer to the question. That mainly happens due to lack of revision! Most students don’t falter in Current Affairs because of lack of regular studies, but because of lack of revision.

General Tip: Worst time to study for CLAT current affairs is just before sleeping and after classes. The best time to study for CLAT current affairs is just after waking up (preferably early in the morning) and just after one is back to studies after a break!

Important topics to prepare for CLAT Current Affairs section

In Current Affairs, some topics have traditionally appeared more frequently than others. These areas are Appointments, Awards, Sports, Days and Dates and Legal GK, than Controversies, Removals, MoUs etc. Thus, a student should study these topics thoroughly to prepare for CLAT current affairs section. However, this is merely as per the trend of previous years’, which might change this year. Therefore, candidates should not completely ignore the latter topics but go in-depth of the former topics.

Mock tests to prepare for CLAT Current Affairs section

Current Affairs, a seemingly harmless section, can create a havoc for candidates if some basic rules are not followed while practicing the mock tests and attempting the paper, which include:

• Current Affairs section shouldn’t take more than ten minutes of candidates’ time in offline CLAT. Therefore they should practice the CLAT mock test with the same goal in mind.

• Candidates should be quick in solving questions. A golden tip is to not think much and exercise their discretion well. One either knows the answer or doesn’t. If a candidate knows the answer, he/she should mark the answer quickly. If not, he/she should decide whether to mark any answer or leave. If one decides to mark an answer, one must go with the gut feeling and mark! Toppers never devote disproportionate amount of time to Current Affairs Section in CLAT.

• There are a few suggestions doing rounds on Internet that students should first solve Current Affairs questions and then Static GK ones. Candidates should not pay heed to this advice, since it will only result in waste of time and energy. They should just solve all questions in the order in which they’ve been given while practising the CLAT mock test and solving the question paper on the day of exam.

Recommended study material for CLAT current affairs section

Mastering Current Affairs is about expanding the knowledge base not in whichever way possible but in a carefully methodical way. The Internet ecosystem is full of free Current Affairs resources, including Videos, Articles, News feeds, Questions etc. If a student doesn’t restrict himself/herself while preparing for CLAT current affairs section, he might soon find himself going through multiple sources daily in quest of new information, but without adding anything to his scores kitty.

Thus, a student should only restrict himself/herself to two sources for CLAT current affairs preparation - LegalEdge MonthLE magazines and either GKToday (news articles here are a little more explanatory) or CloudAffairs (News articles here are a little more precise here).

Last week strategies for CLAT current affairs section

The last week before CLAT, would be the most crucial, especially for General Knowledge section. Since CLAT current affairs is a memory-based section, a lot of hard work can go down the drain if a proper revision strategy is not followed. Following are a few strategies which candidates can follow while revising for CLAT current affairs.

• Revise notes consistently in the last week. Whatever notes that students have prepared in the last few months should be their best friends during this period. They should ensure that they go through all their notes at least twice before writing CLAT.

• Candidates must get get a yearly compendium of any prominent publisher and focus on the most on the important topics suggested above.

• It is advised that they go through the ‘Penultimate Day Revision Module’ given in the LegalEdge Grand Masters Box (GMB) on May 11, 2019. The Current Affairs Questions given there are carefully curated on the basis of important questions of last one year. Candidates should go through them multiple times before writing CLAT.

With perseverance and dedication, cracking CLAT becomes a reality!

Common Law Admission Test will be conducted by CLAT consortium of NLUs headed by NLU, Odisha, Cuttack, this year. The entrance test serves to be a gateway for law aspirants to secure a seat in 21 participating institutes for UG and PG law programmes. CLAT 2019 will be held on May 12, 2019.