by Siddharth Dey
I have answered these questions below:
- The Hindu – to read or not to read?
- How to prepare for Current Affairs.
- Do you need to know all legal maxims, and how to learn them?
1. How much weightage does The Hindu have in CLAT?
In terms of current affairs, you’d be much better off reading from a wesbite dedicated to competitive exams like Jagranjosh, or magazines like Competition in Focus. If you specifically read any newspaper for CA, then you’ll be wasting a lot of time looking around for news which are relevant for CLAT (which will be few in number).
It’s a great source for improving your reading habits, which happens to be of utmost important for any competitive exam like CLAT, and exposing yourself to a varied assortment of words and quality writing. [answered HERE on March 6, 2017]
2. How should I study for the section of Current Affairs for CLAT 2016(Please read details)? There are about 5 months left. I haven’t read any of the newspapers until now. So, should I start reading the newspapers of each day of all the previous months? Or should I go for compendiums? And which compendiums do you recommend? BTW, is it from March 2015-16? And I’ve taken a break after grade 12.
Don’t. Instead, try and be regular from now till mid-to-end of April. Tbf, papers will cover 9/10 of the random everythings that happens in a day, and there will be times when you don’t have one noteworthy thing – one thing it does help with is in inculcating a habit of (forced) reading, which is crucial for CLAT. If you want to save time then use the monthlies. Personally, I’d combined the monthlies with websites such as Jagranjosh & Gktoday which covers daily news, but from a competitive exam perspective – so that’s filtered out news, tailored to your needs.
Coming to the backlog, annual compendiums such as Panorama (not Mano) or Competition in Focus’ should be out by mid-Jan. That should cover it. If you want to be thorough, then there are the websites I mentioned – the downside is that it might seem quite a handful since they include stuff that newspapers don’t, and on top of that you have an entire year’s CA to cover in less than half the time. Also, since the annuals are just about two weeks away, the hard labour seems pointless. Once again, annuals do a pretty neat job of summing up the year.
For compendiums, I personally stuck to CiF’s monthlies, annual, and impulse-bought their March’15-March’16 edition also. All news items are in concise, bullet form, and are divided in month-wise AND topic-wise basis. Straight to the point and saves time.
Lastly the exact time-frame is probably known only to the paper-setters. Casting a wide net, I’d say March ’15 to April ’16, both inclusive.
Excuse the verbosity, and all the very best!
TL;DR: Don’t bother reading papers at all. Read one of the monthly compendiums instead, which are tailor-made for competitive exams and cover the necessary news items, tersely. Get an annual compendium to cover the previous months. You may refer to the CA websites to cover said months. [answered HERE on December 26, 2015]
3. Should I know all the legal maxims for CLAT 2017? That is, from A to Z?
Au contraire.
Why? Siddharth Dey’s answer to Can you suggest some effective ways to learn latin phrases for students preparing for CLAT? [the answer on this link was in the previous post]
Legal Maxims cover phrases in English, as well as Latin and French (mostly). These happen to be commonplace in legal jargon, and some of them are used outside the legal world too!
You’ll find your preparatory materials, especially for Legal Aptitude and English, using some strange phrases here and there – either it is a Legal Maxim, or it’s a simple English word which you didn’t know of.
Either way, a quick Google search will tell you its meaning.
Therefore, the easiest way to know these legal maxims is by reading as much as you can.
Why this is a great way to learn is – there is no point mugging up randomly between A-Z.
Your memory is limited. So, you might end up remembering an insignificant word, and forgetting an important phrase – that’s only because you did not know which one is ‘important’ and which one is not.
Best way to figure that out is to see which one is used a lot in whatever you are reading.
Modi appears in the paper everyday, so he must be important. My neighbour doesn’t, because he isn’t important. Not the best of examples, but I hope you get the drift.
Additionally, I think it’s also the best way of doing anything related to understanding the meaning of words – to read them in the context in which they are used.
The past years papers will also help you in narrowing down which phrases you need to go through. [answered HERE on Jan 2, 2017]
[Siddharth’s Quora profile can be found HERE.]
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