It is time to start CLAT 2018 preparations. Let us begin with looking at the weightage of marks assigned to each section.

Section	Weightage
English	40
General Knowledge	50
Maths	20
Legal Aptitude	50
Logical Reasoning	40

 You have one whole to prepare so I am going to give you tips which will help you gain in-depth knowledge of each subject.

 

Make your time table in a way that you give two hours time everyday to CLAT preparation because you also have to prepare for boards so two hours time in the beginning should do you good. If you are re-appearing because you did not make it in the 2017 exams then spend eight  hours preparing everyday so that you land among the toppers in 2018. The students who are appearing for boards should also bring their study hours from two hours to eight hours when there are two months left for CLAT. Those appearing for boards should do fine when they join a test series of a good coaching institute in the last two months and those who are re-appearing should join coaching for one whole year.

 

Let us examine each section in detail

 

English

• Inculcate a habit of reading as many English newspapers per day as you can. This will improve your English as well as your GK.
• Pick up the dictionary and read the meanings of 20 words daily. Use Norman Lewis’ book called Word Power Made Easy to get a hang of antonyms and synonyms. For grammar go for the book called Wren and Martin.

General Knowledge

• Read an English newspaper and pay special attention to the editorials. I recommend that you read ” The Hindu”
• Listen to one hour of news every day. Go for that news show which covers the entire day’s events in one hour.
• Make daily notes

This covers your current affairs

• The Pearson GK manual will help you cover the static GK section and this book is helpful for competitive exams in specific so expect questions from here. You could start small and aim ten pages a day of this GK manual.

Maths

The thing is that the syllabus itself states that you can expect anything in Maths from what you studied from grade IV till grade X so I suggest a shortcut.

• Go through all past 10 year papers and you will be able to arrive at the conclusion about which topics repeat over the years. If you find even a single question from a topic then study that topic in detail. That  is the simplest way to arrive at the exact syllabus and saves you a lot of time which you would have wasted on topics which would not be covered.
• Once that is done then concentrate on mock test questions and study the topics covered.

Legal reasoning

• This section should be covered by any good coaching institute and material provided by them should be enough to prepare you for the exam.
• The section has been increasingly seen to include questions on legal GK. Legal maxims should be covered along with big news about SC and HC judgments. Important posts held by lawyers in the country can be a question.
• If you haven’t joined any coaching institute then I recommend the compilation of  past year papers by A.P. Bhardwaj. Practicing past year papers is a must.

Logical reasoning

• I  recommend RS Aggarwal for logical reasoning. This book is more than good enough and along with that you should refer to past year papers.

To conclude I would suggest that you keep practicing past year papers and take as many mock tests as possible