CLAT English Including Comprehension 2024

Summary: When you read, understand and extract meaning for an overall idea of the key points in the passage. Learning and implementing reading strategies and changing how you read can improve your reading comprehension abilities and make reading more accessible and enjoyable. There are two components of reading comprehension: text comprehension and vocabulary knowledge. Vocabulary knowledge is the ability to understand the language being used, while text comprehension is using this language to develop an awareness of the meaning behind the text.

The new pattern of the CLAT exam is designed to evaluate your critical thinking, analytical skills, and reading ability. 

Most of you may neglect this section thinking that you can prepare this at the end but remember, you cannot develop your reading skills overnight; instead, you require consistent practice and focus. So, make it a habit to read every day! 

Like other sections, English has passage-based questions, requiring you to read passages related to politics, business, art, and history because the text in the comprehension is probably asked from one of these categories.

Let's know how prioritizing things and preparing a to-do list will help enhance your reading skills and CLAT English, including comprehension preparations.

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Why is Reading Comprehension for CLAT Important?

CLAT English, including comprehension, is essential for several reasons and can provide many benefits. Reading effectively can improve your reading speed and help you score well in the upcoming CLAT Entrance Exam. 

• Being able to understand and analyze the data given in the comprehension passages.
• Improved your ability to find out the correct option.
• The ability to comprehend and engage in current events that are in written form, such as in newspapers, magazines, etc.
• Increased ability to focus on reading for an extended period.

To read any text, your brain must process not only the literal words but their relationship with one another, the context behind the words, and how subtle language and vocabulary usage can impact the emotion and meaning behind the text.

Tips to Solve CLAT English Including Comprehension 2024

Reading comprehension is one of the best ways to assess your capacity to understand, comprehend, summarize, and answer. 

Tricks to Improve your Reading Comprehension Skills: Improve your Speed

Apart from reading skills, it is essential to focus on your speed. CLAT paper will have lengthy and complex passages, so you should improve your reading speed while understanding the passage simultaneously.

• Before answering the question, make sure to read the passage carefully.
• Make sure to note down the time you are taking for each comprehension passage and improve your time management for CLAT.
• Keep a timer while practising the previous year's questions.

Tricks to Improve your Reading Comprehension Skills: Focus on Vocabulary

In the English section, most of the questions are based on topics like synonyms, antonyms, Idioms, etc. Hence, you must be strong in your vocabulary to attempt this section. 

The following are a few CLAT English preparation tips to improve your vocabulary.

• Learn at least 20 new English words daily. Note the meaning of each word you find unfamiliar or difficult to remember. This is the best way to improve your vocabulary.
• Make a habit of reading the newspaper for at least 45 minutes daily.
• Implement shortcuts to make learning words easy and fun.

CLAT English Including Comprehension 2024: Practice Previous Year's Papers

• Solving previous year's papers is one of the best methods to enhance your speed and accuracy in the final exam.
• Try to solve as many questions as possible from the previous year's CLAT question papers to improve your speed in the final exam. 
• With the help of question papers, you can build your confidence levels too.

What is asked in CLAT English, including Comprehension 2024?

The passage's content is derived from contemporary or historically significant fiction and non-fiction writing.

• As per the CLAT Syllabus, the English section includes passages of 450 words each. 
• The standard of the passage will be of the class 12 level.
• Each passage shall include multiple-choice questions that must be answered after reading the passage.
• Note that you have to answer the questions only by reading the passage; no prior knowledge of the content is required, and all answers will only be given in the passage.

How to Approach CLAT English Reading Comprehension Questions 2024?

Developing good reading skills is one of the best ways to answer the questions asked in CLAT English, including Comprehension 2024.

Read the daily newspapers to improve the English Language. This way, you can come across new words and terminologies, which can significantly help.

Attempt as many CLAT Mock Tests as possible to understand the type of questions asked and the difficulty level of the exam. 

The passage will have specific major points, arguments, or statements that support the main summary of the passage. Try to analyze and understand the passage in depth.

Speed-reading could sometimes lead to wrong answers; hence try to read properly and carefully. Also, read all the given options before deciding on any answer. 

Which Newspapers to Read for Improving Vocabulary?

Most of you might wonder how to read a newspaper for CLAT to improve your vocabulary and grammar. First of all, you should filter out the main topics of the newspaper which are relevant for exams. The following are some of the newspapers that you can read to improve your vocabulary.

• The Hindu
• The Indian Express newspaper
• The Telegraph
• The Hindustan Times

Sample Questions for CLAT English Including Comprehension 2024

Check the sample passages below. 

Passage 1

The idea to use Navajo for secure communications came from Philip Johnston, the son of a missionary to the Navajos and one of the few non-Navajos who spoke their language fluently. Reared on the Navajo reservation, Johnston was a World War I veteran who knew of the military’s search for a code that would withstand all attempts to decipher it. He also knew Native American languages, notably Choctaw, had been used in World War I to encode messages.

Johnston believed Navajo answered the military requirement for an undecipherable code because it is an unwritten language of extreme complexity. Its syntax and tonal qualities, not to mention dialects, make it unintelligible to anyone without extensive exposure and training. It has no alphabet or symbols and is spoken only on the Navajo lands of the American Southwest. One estimate indicates that fewer than 30 non-Navajos, none of them Japanese, could understand the language during World War II's outbreak.

Early in 1942, Johnston met with Major General Clayton B. Vogel, the commanding general of Amphibious Corps, Pacific Fleet, and his staff to convince them of the Navajo language’s value as a code. Johnston staged tests under simulated combat conditions, demonstrating that Navajos could encode, transmit and decode a three-line English message in 20 seconds. Machines of the time required 30 minutes to perform the same job. Convinced, Vogel recommended to the Commandant of the Marine Corps that the Marines recruit 200 Navajos.

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Q1. The author most likely mentions the fact that Navajo “has no alphabet or symbols” to

• (a) emphasize how difficult it is to decipher the Navajo language
• (b) suggest a potential drawback of the use of Navajo for secure communications
• (c) explain why so few non-Navajos can speak the language
• (d) highlight the differences between Navajo and other Native American languages

Q2. The passage is primarily concerned with

• (a) examining the complexity of a language
• (b) profiling someone’s search for a solution to a problem
• (c) analyzing the benefits and drawbacks of an approach
• (d) explaining why a certain strategy was adopted

Passage 2

To turn my eyes outwards now and to say a little about the relationship between the Indian writer and the majority white culture in that midst he lives, and with which his work will sooner or later have to deal: Common to many Bombay-raised middle-class children of my generation, I grew up with an intimate knowledge of, and even sense of friendship with, a certain kind of England: a dream-England composed of Test Matches at Lord's presided over by the voice of John Arlott, at which FreddieTrueman bowled unceasingly and without success at Polly Umrigar; of Enid Blyton and Billy Bunter, in which we were even prepared to smile indulgently at portraits such as 'Hurree JamSet Ram Singh,' 'the dusky nabob of Bhanipur.'

I wanted to come to England. I couldn't wait, and to be fair, England has done all right by me, but I find it a little difficult to be properly grateful. I can't escape the view that my relatively easy ride is not the result of the dream- England's famous sense of tolerance and fair play, but of my social class, my freak fair skin, and my 'English' English accent. Take away any of these; the story would have been very different. Because of course, the dream of England is no more than a dream.

Sadly, it's a dream from which too many white Britons refuse to wake. Recently, on a live radio program, a professional humorist asked me, in all seriousness, why I objected to being called a wog. He said he had always thought it a rather charming word, a term of endearment. 'I was at the zoo the other day, 'he revealed, 'and a zookeeper told me that the wogs were best with the animals; they stuck their fingers in their ears and wiggled them about, and the animals felt at home.'

The ghost of Hurree Jamset Ram Singh walks among us still. As Richard Wright found long ago in America, black-and-white descriptions of society are no longer compatible. Fantasy, or the mingling of fantasy and naturalism, is one way of dealing with these problems. It offers a way of echoing in the form of our work the issues faced by all of us: how to build a new, 'modern' world out of an old, legend-haunted civilization, an old culture that we have brought into the heart of newer ones.

But whatever technical solutions we may find, Indian writers in these islands, like others who have migrated into the north from the south, are capable of writing from a kind of double perspective: because they, we, are at one and the same time insiders and outsiders in this society. We can offer this stereoscopic vision in place of 'whole sight'.

Q1. The author's experience in England is not the normative experience of an ordinary Indian because

• (a) Like the author, the ordinary Indian has not nurtured a "dream England" or aspirations of reaching the dreamland.
• (b) Like the author, the ordinary Indian has acquired airs and nuances that are essentially English but are betrayed by his/her complexion.
• (c) Unlike the author, the ordinary Indian has a radical sense of nationhood, citizenship, and identity.
• (d) Unlike the author, the ordinary Indian has not imbibed and cannot simulate signs of English culture.

Q2. The professional humorist whom the author met regards the term "wog," as a charming word and a term for endearment. Which of the following statements is true in the light of the zookeeper's comment informing the humorist's connotation?

• (a) The humorist thinks that "wog" is a harmless term, and its meaning becomes more positive in light of the zookeeper's comment.
• (b) The zookeeper's comment subverts the harmless connotation of the term wog.
• (c) The humorist thinks that "wog" is a harmless term, and its meaning remains the same even after considering the zookeeper's comment.
• (d) The zookeeper's comment does not have any implication on the meaning attributed by the humorist.

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Q3. What struggles are identified in the struggles to make a new country our own?

• (a) A gender struggle
• (b) A class struggle
• (c) A struggle between cultures
• (d) A struggle to migrate

Q4. Which of the following statements about Indian writers is supported by the information provided in the passage?

• (a) It's easier for an Indian writer to write in England
• (b) The writers who migrated from India are able to write with double perspectives
• (c) Indian writers are the insiders to India and outsiders to England
• (d) Option (b) and (c)

Q5. What does the passage refer to while mentioning "Richard Wright in black and white descriptions of society are no longer compatible."

• (a) Differences in the good and evil sides of the society
• (b) Incompatibility between the old and new society
• (c) Clashes between the opinions of the black and the white populations
• (d) None of these

Passage 3

The painter Roy Lichtenstein helped to define pop art—the movement that incorporated commonplace objects and commercial-art techniques into paintings—by paraphrasing the style of comic books in his work. His merger of a popular genre with the forms and intentions of fine art generated a complex result. While poking fun at the art world's pretensions, Lichtenstein’s work also conveyed a seriousness of theme that enabled it to transcend mere parody.

That Lichtenstein’s images were fine art was at first difficult to see because, with their word balloons and highly stylized figures, they looked like nothing more than the comic book panels from which they were copied. Standard art history holds that pop art emerged as an impersonal alternative to the histrionics of abstract expressionism, a movement in which painters conveyed their private attitudes and emotions using nonrepresentational techniques. Abstract expressionism had already lost much of its force by the time pop art first appeared in the early 1960s. Pop art painters weren’t quarrelling with the powerful early abstract expressionist work of the late 1940s but with the second generation of abstract expressionists whose work seemed airy, high-minded, and overly lyrical. Pop art paintings were full of simple black lines and large areas of primary colour. Lichtenstein’s work was part of a general rebellion against the fading emotional power of abstract expressionism rather than an aloof attempt to ignore it.

But if rebellion against previous art by means of the careful imitation of a popular genre were all that characterized Lichtenstein’s work, it would possess only the reflective power that parodies have in relation to their subjects. Beneath its cartoonish methods, his work displayed an impulse toward realism, an urge to say that what was missing from the contemporary painting was the depiction of contemporary life. The stilted romances and war stories portrayed in the comic books on which he based his canvases, the stylized automobiles, hot dogs, and table lamps that appeared in his pictures, were reflections of the culture Lichtenstein inhabited. But, in contrast to some pop art, Lichtenstein’s work exuded not a jaded cynicism about consumer culture but a kind of deliberate naiveté intended as a response to the excess of sophistication he observed not only in the later abstract expressionists but in some other pop artists. With the comics—typically the domain of youth and innocence—as his reference point, a nostalgia fills his paintings that gives them an inner sweetness for all their surface bravado. His persistent use of comic-art conventions demonstrates faith in reconciliation between cartoons and fine art and between parody and true feeling.

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Q1. Which one of the following best captures the author’s attitude toward Lichtenstein’s work?

• (a) enthusiasm for its more rebellious aspects
• (b) respect for its successful parody of youth and innocence
• (c) pleasure in its blatant rejection of abstract expressionism
• (d) admiration for its subtle critique of contemporary culture
• (e) appreciation for its ability to incorporate both realism and naiveté

Q2. The author most likely lists some of the themes and objects influencing and appearing in Lichtenstein’s paintings (middle of the last paragraph) primarily to

• (a) show that the paintings depict aspects of contemporary life
• (b) support the claim that Lichtenstein’s work was parodic in intent
• (c) contrast Lichtenstein’s approach to art with that of abstract expressionism
• (d) suggest the emotions that lie at the heart of Lichtenstein’s work
• (e) endorse Lichtenstein’s attitude toward consumer culture

Q3. The primary purpose of the passage is most likely to

• (a) express curiosity about an artist’s work
• (b) clarify the motivation behind an artist’s work
• (c) contrast two opposing theories about an artist’s work
• (d) describe the evolution of an artist’s work
• (e) refute a previous overestimation of an artist’s work

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Passage 4

The struggle to obtain legal recognition of aboriginal rights is difficult. Even if a right is written into the law, there is no guarantee that the future will not bring changes that undermine the right. For this reason, the federal government of Canada in 1982 extended constitutional protection to those aboriginal rights already recognized under the law. This protection was extended to the Indian, Inuit, and Métis peoples; the three groups were generally thought to comprise Canada's aboriginal population. But this decision has placed on provincial courts the enormous burden of interpreting and translating the necessarily general constitutional language into specific rulings. The result has been inconsistent recognition and establishment of aboriginal rights, despite the continued efforts of aboriginal peoples to raise issues concerning their rights.

The constitution defines Aboriginal rights in Canada as aboriginal peoples’ rights to ownership of land and its resources, the inherent right of aboriginal societies to self-government, and the right to legal recognition of indigenous customs. But difficulties arise in applying these broadly conceived rights. For example, while affirming legal recognition of indigenous customs might appear straightforward, the exact legal meaning of “indigenous” is extremely difficult to interpret. The intent of the constitutional protection is to recognize only long-standing traditional customs, not those of recent origin; provincial courts, therefore, require aboriginal peoples to provide legal documentation that any customs they seek to protect were practised sufficiently long ago—a criterion defined in practice to mean before the establishment of British sovereignty over the specific territory. However, this requirement makes it difficult for aboriginal societies, which often relied on oral tradition rather than written records, to support their claims.

Furthermore, even if aboriginal peoples successfully convince the courts that specific rights should be recognized, it is frequently difficult to determine exactly what these rights amount to. Consider aboriginal land claims. Even when aboriginal ownership of specific lands is fully established, the problem of interpreting the meaning of that “ownership.” In a 1984 case in Ontario, an aboriginal group claimed that its property rights should be interpreted as full ownership in the contemporary sense of private property, which allows for the sale of the land or its resources. But the provincial court instead ruled that the law had previously recognized only the aboriginal right to use the land and therefore granted property rights so minimal as to allow only the bare survival of the community. Here, the provincial court’s ruling was excessively conservative in its assessment of the current law. Regrettably, it appears that this group will not be successful unless it can move its case from the provincial courts into the Supreme Court of Canada, which will be, one hopes, more insistent upon a satisfactory application of the constitutional reforms.

Q1. Which of the following most accurately states the passage's main point?

• (a)The overly conservative rulings of Canada’s provincial courts have been a barrier to constitutional reforms intended to protect aboriginal rights.
• (b)The overwhelming burden placed on provincial courts of interpreting constitutional language in Canada has halted efforts by aboriginal peoples to gain full ownership of land.
• (c)Constitutional language aimed at protecting aboriginal rights in Canada has so far left the protection of these rights uncertain due to the difficult task of interpreting this language.
• (d)Constitutional reforms meant to protect aboriginal rights in Canada have, in fact, been used by some provincial courts to limit these rights.
• (e)Efforts by aboriginal rights advocates to uphold constitutional reforms in Canada may be more successful if heard by the Supreme Court rather than by the provincial courts.

Q2. Does the passage provide evidence to suggest that the author would be most likely to assent to one of the following proposals?

• (a)Aboriginal peoples in Canada should not be answerable to the federal laws of Canada.
• (b)Oral tradition should sometimes be considered legal documentation of certain indigenous customs.
• (c)Aboriginal communities should be granted full protection of all of their customs.
• (d)Provincial courts should be given no authority to decide cases involving questions of aboriginal rights.
• (e)The language of the Canadian constitution should more carefully delineate the instances to which reforms apply.

Passage 5

The World Trade Organisation (WTO) was created in the early 1990s as a component of the Uruguay Round negotiation. However, it could have been negotiated as part of the Tokyo Round of the 1970s since the negotiation was an attempt at a ‘constitutional reform’ of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT). Or it could have been put off to the future, as the US government wanted. What factors led to the creation of the WTO in the early 1990s? One factor was the pattern of multilateral bargaining that developed late in the Uruguay Round. Like all complex international agreements, the WTO was a product of a series of trade­offs between principal actors and groups. For the United States, which did not want a new organization, the disputed settlement part of the WTO package achieved its longstanding goal of a more effective and legal dispute settlement system. For the Europeans, who by the 1990s had come to view GATT dispute settlement less in political terms add more as a regime of legal obligations, the WTO package was acceptable as a means to discipline the resort to unilateral measures by the United States. Countries like Canada and other middle and smaller trading partners were attracted by the expansion of a rule­based system and by the symbolic value of a trade organization, both of which inherently support the weak against the strong. The developing countries were attracted due to the provisions banning unilateral measures.

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Finally, and perhaps most importantly, many countries at the Uruguay Round came to prioritize the export gains more than the import losses the negotiation would produce. They came to associate the WTO and a rule­based system with those gains. This reasoning – replicated in many countries – was contained in U. S. Ambassador Kantor’s defence of the WTO, and it announced a recognition that international trade and its benefits cannot be enjoyed unless trading nations accept the discipline of a negotiated rule­based environment. A second factor in creating the WTO was pressure from lawyers and the legal process. The dispute settlement system of the WTO was seen as a victory for legalists, but the matter went deeper than that. The GATT, and the WTO, are contract organizations based on rules, and an organization creating a further rule will inevitably be influenced by the legal process.

Robert Hudee has written of the ‘momentum of legal development,’ but what is this precisely? Legal development can be defined as the promotion of the technical legal values of consistency, clarity (or certainty), and effectiveness; these are values that those responsible for administering any legal system will seek to maximize. As it played out in the WTO, consistency meant integrating under one roof the whole lot of separate agreements signed under GATT auspices; clarity meant removing ambiguities about the powers of contracting parties to make certain decisions or to undertake waivers, and effectiveness meant eliminating exceptions arising out of grandfather­rights and resolving defects in dispute settlement procedures and institutional provisions. Concern for these values is inherent in any rule­based system of co­operation since, without these values, rules would be meaningless in the first place, creating their own incentive for fulfilment. The moment of legal development has occurred in other institutions besides the GATT, most notably in the European Union (EU). Over the past two decades, the European Court of Justice (ECJ) has consistently rendered decisions that have expanded the EU’s internal market incrementally, in which the doctrine of ‘mutual recognition’ handed down in the Cassis de Dijon case in 1979 was a key turning point.

The court is now widely recognized as a major player in European integration, even though arguably such a strong role was not originally envisaged in the Treaty of Rome, which initiated the current European Union. One means the Court used to expand integration was the ‘teleological method of interpretation, whereby the actions of member states were evaluated against ‘the accomplishment of the most elementary goals set forth in the Preamble to the (Rome) treaty. The teleological method represents an effort to keep current policies consistent with stated goals, and it is analogous to the effort in GATT to keep contracting party trade practices consistent with slated rules. In both cases, legal concerns and procedures are an independent force for further co­operation. In large part, the WTO was a consolidation exercise. In the context of a trade negotiation that created a near­revolutionary expansion of international trade rules, the formation of the WTO was a deeply conservative act needed to ensure that the benefits of the new rules would not be lost.

The WTO was all about institutional structure and dispute settlement: these concerns of conservatives and not revolutionaries, and that is why lawyers and legalists took the lead on these issues. The WTO codified the GATT institutional practice that had been developed by custom over three decades. It incorporated a new dispute settlement system to keep old and new rules from becoming sham. The international structure and the dispute settlement system were necessary to preserve and enhance the integrity of the multilateral trade regime built incrementally from the 1940s to the 1990s.

Q1. The statement ‘... it amounted to a recognition that international trade and its benefits cannot be enjoyed unless trading nations accept the discipline of a negotiated rule­based environment’ refers to:

• (a) Ambassador Kantor’s defence of the WTO.
• (b) The export gains many countries associated with a rule-based system.
• (c) The higher priority on export gains placed by many countries at the Uruguay Round.
• (d) The provision of a rule­based system by the WTO.

Q2. What would be the closest reason why WTO was not formed in the 1970s? 

• (a) The Tokyo Round negotiations were an attempt at constitutional reform.
• (b) Lawyers did not work for the dispute settlement system.
• (c) The US government did not like it.
• (d) Important players did not find it in their best interest to do so.

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Q3. The most likely reason for the acceptance of the WTO package by nations was that

• (a) Its rule­based system leads to export gains.
• (b) It has the means to prevent the US from taking unilateral measures.
• (c) They recognized the need for a rule­based environment to protect the benefits of increased trade.
• (d) It settles disputes more legally and more effectively.

Q4. In the method of interpretation of the European Court of Justice:

• (a) Enunciation of the most elementary community goals needed to be emphasized.
• (b) Contracting party trade practices need to be consistent with stated rules.
• (c) Current policies need to be consistent with stated goals.
• (d) Actions against member states needed to be evaluated against

Q5. According to the passage, WTO promoted technical legal values partly through. 

• (a) Ambiguities about the powers of contracting parties to make certain decisions.
• (b) Grandfather­rights exceptions and defects in dispute settlement procedures.
• (c) Rules that create their own incentive for fulfilment.
• (d)  Integrating under one roof the agreements signed under GATT.

Conclusion: 

The comprehension passage will have some set of points and arguments or statements that support or counter the main theme of the passage, so you must try to discover the main point. Once you read the comprehension passage, move on to the question and read it carefully.

Focus on keywords that change the meaning of the entire sentence.

Developing reading comprehension skills helps you score well in English and other sections.