CLAT English Questions

Top 50 CLAT English Questions With Answers

Mastering the English language section in CLAT is crucial for acing the exam. Here, we will learn about the types of CLAT English questions you will face in the 2025 exam. 

We’ll covered the top 50 CLAT English language questions with answers to help you understand and prepare for everything from reading comprehension to vocabulary and grammar. 

Whether you’re beginning your CLAT preparation or refining your English skills, this guide is your go-to resource for all things related to English language questions in CLAT exam.

Announcement CLAT 2025 Exam Date Out!!

The CLAT English syllabus is designed to evaluate a candidate’s command over the language, including comprehension skills, vocabulary, grammar, and the ability to analyze and interpret information. 

This section is essential because strong language skills are necessary for understanding legal documents and arguments, drafting precise legal documents, and effective communication in the legal field.

The performance in this section can greatly influence the overall score, potentially becoming a deciding factor in the competitive ranking process.

SubjectNo. of QuestionsWeightage 
English Language22-2620%

We have curated the top 50 CLAT English language questions directly from past year papers. Each passage is accompanied by a series of questions that test comprehension, vocabulary, and grammatical skills, offering you a practical insight into the types and styles of questions you will encounter in CLAT 2025 or CLAT 2026.

Passage 1:

I grew up in a small town not far from Kalimpong. In pre-liberalization India, everything arrived late: not just material things but also ideas. Magazines — old copies of Reader’s Digest and National Geographic — arrived late too, after the news had become stale by months or, often, years. This temporal gap turned journalism into literature, news into legend, and historical events into something akin to plotless stories. But like those who knew no other life, we accepted this as the norm. The dearth of reading material in towns and villages in socialist India is hard to imagine, and it produced two categories of people: those who stopped reading after school or college, and those — including children — who read anything they could find. I read road signs with the enthusiasm that attaches to reading thrillers. When the iterant kabadiwala, collector of papers, magazines, and rejected things, visited our neighbourhood, I rushed to the house where he was doing business. He bought things at unimaginably low prices from those who’d stopped having any use for them, and I rummaged through his sacks of old magazines. Sometimes, on days when business was good, he allowed me a couple of copies of Sportsworld magazine for free. I’d run home and, ignoring my mother’s scolding, plunge right in — consuming news about India’s victory in the Benson and Hedges Cup….

Two takeaways from these experiences have marked my understanding of the provincial reader’s life: the sense of belatedness, of everything coming late, and the desire for pleasure in language. …. Speaking of belatedness, the awareness of having been born at the wrong time in history, of inventing things that had already been discovered elsewhere, far away, without our knowledge or cooperation, is a moment of epiphany and deep sadness. I remember a professor’s choked voice, narrating to me how all the arguments he’d made in his doctoral dissertation, written over many, many years of hard work (for there indeed was a time when PhDs were written over decades), had suddenly come to naught after he’d discovered the work of C.W.E. Bigsby. This, I realised as I grew older, was one of the characteristics of provincial life: that they (usually males) were saying trite things with the confidence of someone declaring them for the first time. I, therefore, grew up surrounded by would-be Newtons who claimed to have discovered gravity (again). There’s a deep sense of tragedy attending this sort of thing — the sad embarrassment of always arriving after the party is over. And there’s a harsh word for that sense of belatedness: “dated.” What rescues it is the unpredictability of these anachronistic “discoveries” — the randomness and haphazardness involved in mapping connections among thoughts and ideas, in a way that hasn’t yet been professionalised.

[Extracted, with edits and revisions, from “The Provincial Reader”, by Sumana Roy, Los Angeles Review of Books]

Q1. What use was the kabadiwala (wastepicker) to the author?

  1. The kabadiwala bought up all her magazines.
  2. The kabadiwala’s stock of books and magazines were of interest to the author.
  3. The kabadiwala was about to steal the author’s magazines.
  4. The author ordered books online which the kabadiwala delivered.

Q2. What according to the author is essential about the experience of being a ‘provincial reader’?

  1. Belatedness in the sense of coming late for everything.
  2. Over-eagerness.
  3. Accepting a temporal gap between what was current in the wider world and the time at which these arrived in the provincial location.
  4. None of the above

Q3. Why did the author feel a sense of epiphany and deep sadness?

  1. Because the things that felt special and unique to the author, were already established and accepted thought in the wider world.
  2. Because the author was less well-read than others.
  3. Because the author missed being in a big city.
  4. All the above

Q4. What does the word ‘anachronistic’ as used in the passage, mean?

  1. Rooted in a non-urban setting
  2. Related to a mofussil area
  3. Connected with another time
  4. Opposed to prevailing sensibilities

Q5. Which of the following options captures the meaning of the last sentence best?

  1. Though the author feels provincial, she pretends to be from the metropolis.
  2. Though the author feels dated in her access to intellectual ideas, her lack of metropolitan sophistication lets her engage with the ideas with some originality.
  3. Though the author is aware of the limitedness of her knowledge, she is confident and can hold her own in a crowd. She also proud of her roots in the small town.
  4. All the above

Passage 2:

Until the Keeladi site was discovered, archaeologists by and large believed that the Gangetic plains in the north urbanised significantly earlier than Tamil Nadu. Historians have often claimed that large scale town life in India first developed in the Greater Magadha region of the Gangetic basin. This was during the ‘second urbanisation’ phase. The ‘first urbanisation phase’ refers to the rise of the Harappan or Indus Valley Civilisation. Tamil Nadu was thought to have urbanised at this scale only by the third century BCE. The findings at Keeladi push that date back significantly. … Based on linguistics and continuity in cultural legacies, connections between the Indus Valley Civilisation, or IVC, and old Tamil traditions have long been suggested, but concrete archaeological evidence remained absent. Evidence indicated similarities between graffiti found in Keeladi and symbols associated with the IVC. It bolstered the arguments of dissidents from the dominant North Indian imagination, who have argued for years that their ancestors existed contemporaneously with the IVC. … All the archaeologists I spoke to said it was too soon to make definitive links between the Keeladi site and the IVC. There is no doubt, however, that the discovery at Keeladi has changed the paradigm. In recent years, the results of any new research on early India have invited keen political interest, because proponents of Hindu nationalism support the notion of Vedic culture as fundamental to the origins of Indian civilisation. … The Keeladi excavations further challenge the idea of a single fountainhead of Indian life. They indicate the possibility that the earliest identity that can recognisably be considered ‘Indian’ might not have originated in North India. That wasn’t all. In subsequent seasons of the Keeladi dig, archaeologists discovered that Tamili, a variant of the Brahmi script used for writing inscriptions in the early iterations of the Tamil language, could be dated back to the sixth century BCE, likely a hundred years before previously thought. So not only had urban life thrived in the Tamil lands, but people who lived there had developed their own script. “The evolution of writing is attributed to Ashoka’s edicts, but 2600 years ago writing was prevalent in Keeladi,” Mathan Karuppiah, a proud Madurai local, told me. “A farmer could write his own name on a pot he owned. The fight going on here is ‘You are not the one to teach me to write, I have learnt it myself.’ ”

[Excerpted from “The Dig”, by Sowmiya Ashok, Fifty-Two

Q6. What was the assumption about the origin of urban life in India before the Keeladi dig?

  1. The origins lay in the northern Gangetic plains, which urbanised earlier than the south.
  2. The Indus Valley Civilization was the first urban civilization of India.
  3. The second urbanization was known to be in the Magadha empire.
  4. Both (A) and (B)

Q7. “The Keeladi excavations further challenge the idea of a single fountainhead of Indian life.” — in elaboration of this sentence, which of these options follows?

  1. Dominant theories of how urban and modern life came about in ancient India were proved wrong by the Keeladi archaeological dig.
  2. Neither the Indus Valley Civilization, nor the ancient urban civilization of Magadha are clear explanations of how urban life emerged in the Keeladi region of southern India in the third century BCE.
  3. The Keeladi archaeological dig proved that Indian urban and modern life emerged independently in several historical periods and geographies, and no one theory is enough to explain it.
  4. None of the above

Q8. Language, including a script similar to the Brahmi script, emerged in Keeladi in the sixth century BCE. Which of the following is the most convincing conclusion from this statement?

  1. Keeladi is a centre of culture and learning far superior to any others in ancient India.
  2. People of Keeladi were illiterate and could not use language to inscribe on their pots and pans.
  3. Ancient urban history of India, as we know it today, could significantly be altered by the findings of the advances achieved by the Keeladi civilization.
  4. All the above

Q9. BCE is the acronym for:

  1. Before the Common Era
  2. Before Colloquial Era
  3. Before Chapel Eternal
  4. Behind Christ Era

Q10. “A farmer could write his own name on a pot he owned. The fight going on here is ‘You are not the one to teach me to write, I have learnt it myself.’ ” — These sentences imply:

  1. That the Keeladi civilization was an inegalitarian one.
  2. That the Keeladi civilization did not conserve the access to education and literacy only for the elite.
  3. That the farmers of the Keeladi civilization were also potters.
  4. All the above

Read: How to improve English vocabulary

Passage 3:

The call of self-expression turned the village of the internet into a city, which expanded at time-lapse speed, social connections bristling like neurons in every direction. At twelve, I was writing five hundred words a day on a public LiveJournal. By twenty-five, my job was to write things that would attract, ideally, a hundred thousand strangers per post. Now I’m thirty, and most of my life is inextricable from the internet, and its mazes of incessant forced connection—this feverish, electric, unliveable hell.

The curdling of the social internet happened slowly and then all at once. The tipping point, I’d guess, was around 2012. People were losing excitement about the internet, starting to articulate a set of new truisms. Facebook had become tedious, trivial, exhausting. Instagram seemed better, but would soon reveal its underlying function as a three-ring circus of happiness and popularity and success. Twitter, for all its discursive promise, was where everyone tweeted complaints at airlines and moaned about articles that had been commissioned to make people moan. The dream of a better, truer self on the internet was slipping away. Where we had once been free to be ourselves online, we were now chained to ourselves online, and this made us self-conscious. Platforms that promised connection began inducing mass alienation. The freedom promised by the internet started to seem like something whose greatest potential lay in the realm of misuse.

Even as we became increasingly sad and ugly on the internet, the mirage of the better online self continued to glimmer. As a medium, the internet is defined by a built-in performance incentive. In real life, you can walk around living life and be visible to other people. But on the internet—for anyone to see you, you have to act. You have to communicate in order to maintain an internet presence. And, because the internet’s central platforms are built around personal profiles, it can seem—first at a mechanical level, and later on as an encoded instinct—like the main purpose of this communication is to make yourself look good. Online reward mechanisms beg to substitute for offline ones, and then overtake them. This is why everyone tries to look so hot and well-travelled on Instagram; why everyone seems so smug and triumphant on Facebook; and why, on Twitter, making a righteous political statement has come to seem, for many people, like a political good in itself. The everyday madness perpetuated by the internet is the madness of this architecture, which positions personal identity as the centre of the universe. It’s as if we’ve been placed on a lookout that oversees the entire world and given a pair of binoculars that makes everything look like our own reflection.

[Extracted, with edits and revisions, from Trick Mirror: Reflections on Self-Delusion, by Jia Tolentino, Random House, 2019.]

Q11. Which of the following statements can be inferred from the above passage?

  1. The internet expanded very slowly
  2. The internet can be used to cause harm
  3. The internet is addictive
  4. The main purpose of social media platforms is to dissuade people from showing off

Q12. All the following statements are ‘truisms’, except:

  1. The internet has changed the way the world works.
  2. A preference for cat videos can reveal a lot about your personality.
  3. Like with any tool, digital technology has both advantages and disadvantages.
  4. Only time can tell what the future holds.

Q13. Which of the following comes closest to the underlined sentence in the passage?

  1. The way we use the internet says a lot about who we are.
  2. The internet has reduced the distance between people living across the world.
  3. The internet has the ability to customise what we access based on our identity.
  4. The internet only shows us what we don’t want to see.

Q14. Which of the following is a metaphor?

  1. the village of the internet
  2. this feverish, electric, unliveable hell
  3. three-ring circus of happiness and popularity and success
  4. all the above

Q15. Which of the following categories best describes this piece of writing?

  1. Non-fiction essay
  2. Fiction
  3. Academic paper
  4. Poem

Passage 4:

Down by the sandy banks of the Yamuna River, the men must work quickly. At a little past 12 a.m. one humid night in May, they pull back the black plastic tarp covering three boreholes sunk deep in the ground. They then drag thick hoses toward a queue of 20-odd tanker trucks idling quietly with their headlights turned off. The men work in a team: While one man fits a hose’s mouth over a borehole, another clambers atop a truck at the front of the line and shoves the tube’s opposite end into the empty steel cistern attached to the vehicle’s creaky frame. ‘On kar!’ someone shouts in Hinglish; almost instantly, his orders to ‘switch it on’ are obeyed. Diesel generators, housed in nearby sheds, begin to thrum. Submersible pumps, installed in the borehole’s shafts, drone as they disgorge thousands of gallons of groundwater from deep in the earth. The liquid gushes through the hoses and into the trucks’ tanks. The full trucks don’t wait around. As the hose team continues its work, drivers nose down a rutted dirt path until they reach a nearby highway. There, they turn on their lights and pick up speed, rushing to sell their bounty to factories and hospitals, malls and hotels, apartments and hutments across this city of 25 million. Everything about this business is illegal: the boreholes dug without permission, the trucks operating without permits, the water sold without testing or treatment. ‘Water work is night work,’ says a middle-aged neighbour who lives near the covert pumping station and requested anonymity. ‘Bosses arrange buyers, labour fills tankers, the police look the other way, and the muscle makes sure that no one says nothing to nobody.’ Teams like this one are ubiquitous in Delhi, where the official water supply falls short of the city’s needs. A quarter of Delhi’s households live without a piped-water connection; most of the rest receive water for only a few hours each day. So residents have come to rely on private truck owners—the most visible strands of a dispersed web of city councillors, farmers, real estate agents, and fixers who source millions of gallons of water each day from illicit boreholes, and sell the liquid for profit. The entrenched system has a local moniker: the water-tanker mafia. A 2013 audit found that the city loses 60 percent of its water supply to leakages, theft, and a failure to collect revenue. The mafia defends its work as a community service, but there is a much darker picture of Delhi’s subversive water industry: one of a thriving black market populated by small-time freelance agents who are exploiting a fast-depleting common resource and in turn threatening India’s long-term water security.

[Extracted, with edits and revisions, from: “At the Mercy of the Water Mafia”, by Aman Sethi, Foreign Policy]

Q16. Which of the following can be inferred from the passage?

  1. The water tanker mafia’s operations, though illegal, are justified given the vital service they provide to the people of Delhi.
  2. The water supplied by the water tanker mafia is potentially contaminated.
  3. Private truck owners play the most important role in the operations of the water tanker mafia.
  4. The water supplied by the water tank mafia is meant primarily for residential use.

Q17. Which of the following, used in the passage, suggests that the illegal supply of groundwater is not a recent phenomenon?

  1. Entrenched
  2. Ubiquitous
  3. Long-term water security
  4. Fast-depleting common resource

Q18. Which of the following seems to be the author’s main concern in the passage?

  1. Delhi’s water supply infrastructure does not adequately cater to all its residents.
  2. The illegal operations of the water tank mafia do not depend on the complicity of a range of actors, including the police and city councillors.
  3. The petty profiteering of a few actors comes at the immense cost of India’s sustainable access to water.
  4. All the above

Q19. All of the following are sounds you can hear as the water tankers are filled, except:

  1. Creaking
  2. Thrumming
  3. Droning
  4. Gushing

Q20. Which of the following words from the passage means ‘hidden’?

  1. Illicit
  2. Idling
  3. Subversive
  4. Covert

Learn how to read newspaper for CLAT.

Passage 5:

English encodes class in India. It does so by sliding into the DNA of social division: income, caste, gender, religion or place of belonging. The threat it poses to social cohesion has worried public commentators across the political spectrum. In an address delivered as independent India’s Parliament dilly-dallied over the suggestion to replace English with regional languages as the medium of instruction for higher education, Gandhi said, ‘This blighting imposition of a foreign medium upon the youth of the country will be counted by history as one of the greatest tragedies. Our boys think, and rightly in the present circumstances, that without English they cannot get government service. Girls are taught English as a passport to marriage.’

A hundred years later, the language continues to be seen as a tool of exclusion. The problem now is about inequality of access. ‘To be denied English is harmful to the individual as well as our society,’ writes Chetan Bhagat, self-appointed leader of a class war set off by unequal access to English.

Bhagat, an engineer-turned-investment banker, wrote his first college romance in English in 2004. Then only a certain kind of person—someone who grew up reading, writing and speaking the language—wrote books in English—big words, long sentences, literary pretension, heavy with orientalism. In the ten years since Bhagat put the popular in ‘popular’ English fiction, he has written six other novels and sold millions of copies all told. With every new book, all written in deliberately simple English, Bhagat has recruited thousands of new soldiers in his crusade against what he calls the ‘caste system around the language’. Bhagat even has a term for Indians who ‘have’ English: E1. ‘These people had parents who spoke English, had access to good English-medium schools—typically in big cities, and gained early proficiency, which enabled them to consume English products such as newspapers, books and films. English is so instinctive to them that even some of their thought patterns are in English. These people are much in demand.’ The people E1 presumably control, through a nexus of privilege built on ownership of English, are E2: ‘probably ten times the E1s. They are technically familiar with the language. [But] if they sit in an interview conducted by E1s, they will come across as incompetent, even though they may be equally intelligent, creative or hardworking.’

The situation may not be so comically stark. The haves and have-nots may not exactly fit into Bhagat’s stereotypes of urban, sophisticated rich people and provincial, uncultured poor. His argument does not factor in many other walls around English in India. You are more likely to learn English if you are born a man rather than a woman, high caste rather than low caste, south Indian rather than north Indian. There is more than one kind of E1 and more than one kind of E2. And there is more than one way E2s can overthrow E1s. One is to speak it like they know it.

[Extracted, with edits and revisions, from Dreamers: How Young Indians Are Changing the World, by Snigdha Poonam, Penguin Viking, 2018.]

Q21. Which of the following can be inferred about the author’s views on English in contemporary India?

  1. The ability to speak English in India depends on place and social identity.
  2. English is not an Indian language.
  3. English language fluency does not necessarily imply competence.
  4. People’s views on English are divided along political lines.

Q22. Who among the following would defy Chetan Bhagat’s neat categorisation of Indian English-speakers into E1 and E2?

  1. Savitha, an above-average student in an English medium school in Mumbai, belongs to an upper-middle class family. Public speaking makes her extremely nervous and she fumbles through all her interviews.
  2. Moin, once a milkman in Ranchi, learns English at the age of 17. After a lot of hard work, he becomes an instructor of spoken English at a thriving institute.
  3. Both (A) and (B)
  4. Neither (A) nor (B)

Q23. Which of the following best describes the author’s response to Bhagat’s views on English?

  1. The author dismisses his views as a self-appointed expert.
  2. The author completely agrees with his views.
  3. The author neither agrees nor disagrees with his views.
  4. The author considers his views and finds that they lack nuance.

Q24. Which of the following can be inferred from Gandhi’s views with respect to English in post-independence India?

  1. English should not be taught as a subject in Indian universities.
  2. English proficiency is vital in order to gain entry into the bureaucracy.
  3. Indian women cannot get rich if they do not know English.
  4. None of the above

Q25. All the following pairs of words are synonyms, except:

  1. stark, sharp
  2. sophisticated, spoilt
  3. crusade, campaign
  4. cohesion, unity

Passage 6:

‘So pick a bird,’ Iff commanded. ‘Any bird.’ This was puzzling. ‘The only bird around here is a wooden peacock,’ Haroun pointed out, reasonably enough. Iff gave a snort of disgust. ‘A person may choose what he cannot see,’ he said, as if explaining something very obvious to a very foolish individual. ‘A person may mention a bird’s name even if the creature is not present and correct: crow, quail, hummingbird, bulbul, mynah, parrot, kite. A person may even select a flying creature of his own invention, for example winged horse, flying turtle, airborne whale, space serpent or aeromouse. To give a thing a name, a label, a handle; to rescue it from anonymity, to pluck it out of the Place of Namelessness, in short to identify it — well, that’s a way of bringing the said thing into being. Or, in this case, the said bird or Imaginary Flying Organism.’

‘That may be true where you come from,’ Haroun argued. ‘But in these parts, stricter rules apply.’ ‘In these parts,’ rejoined blue-bearded Iff, ‘I am having time wasted by someone who will not trust in what he can’t see. How much have you seen, eh? Africa, have you seen it? No? Then is it truly there? And submarines? Huh? Also, hailstones, baseballs, pagodas? Goldmines? Kangaroos, Mount Fujiyama, the North Pole? And the past, did it happen? And the future, will it come? Believe in your own eyes and you’ll get into a lot of trouble, hot water, a mess.’ With that, he plunged his hand into a pocket of his auberginey pajamas, and when he brought it forth again it was bunched into a fist. ‘So take a look, or I should say a gander, at the enclosed.’ He opened his hand, and Haroun’s eyes almost fell out of his head. Tiny birds were walking about on Iff’s palm; and pecking at it, and flapping their miniature wings to hover just above it. And as well as birds there were fabulous winged creatures out of legends: an Assyrian lion with the head of a bearded man and a pair of large hairy wings growing out of its flanks; and winged monkeys, flying saucers, tiny angels, levitating (and apparently air-breathing) fish. ‘What’s your pleasure, select, choose,’ Iff urged. And although it seemed obvious to Haroun that these magical creatures were so small that they couldn’t possibly have carried so much as a bitten-off fingernail, he decided not to argue and pointed at a tiny crested bird that was giving him a sidelong look through one highly intelligent eye. 

[Extracted, with edits and revisions, from Haroun and the Sea of Stories, by Salman Rushdie, Granta & Penguin, 1990.]

Q26. If Iff is right, which of the following statements is true?

  1. You should only trust what you cannot see
  2. Naming something is the only way to make it unreal
  3. You should only trust what you can see
  4. Naming something is one way to make it real

Q27. Which of the following applies to Iff?

  1. He speaks in contradictions
  2. He has a habit of speaking in synonyms
  3. He uses proverbs to express ideas
  4. He uses metaphors to describe things

Q28. Which of the following most accurately describes what the underlined sentence means in the context of the passage?

  1. Do not restrict your knowledge only to what you can physically see
  2. Accept everything you see uncritically
  3. Trusting your senses is a recipe for success
  4. Learn not to appreciate viewpoints other than your own

Q29. All the words below are related in meaning, except:

  1. levitate
  2. fly
  3. hover
  4. gander

Q30. What does ‘fabulous’ mean in the passage?

  1. very good
  2. unbelievable
  3. mythical
  4. enormous

Learn CLAT English Grammar.

Passage 7:

Public speaking is a powerful real-life skill. Over the centuries, impressive speeches made by people from various walks of life have helped to change hearts, minds and shape the world as we see it today. Speeches that are delivered with intense emotions and conviction can infuse compassion and forgiveness; elevate levels of hatred and destruction; break or unite nations.

On October 5, in 1877 in the mountains of Montana Territory, when Chief Joseph surrendered to General Nelson A. Miles, the former gave a Surrender Speech. The speech included these words: “It is cold, and we have no blankets; the little children are freezing to death. I want time to look for my children, and see how many of them I can find. Maybe I shall find them among the dead. Hear me, my Chiefs! I am tired; my heart is sick and sad. From where the sun now stands I will fight no more forever.”

The heart-wrenching speech bared the grief and misery of the speaker, and those subjected to overwhelming hardships.

During World War II, the speech We Shall Fight on the Beaches delivered by Winston Churchill on June 4, 1940 is considered a high-powered speech that strengthened the determination of those present in the House of Commons. In the speech, he said, “Even though large tracts of Europe and many old and famous States have fallen or may fall into the grip of the Gestapo and all the odious apparatus of Nazi rule, we shall not flag or fail. We shall go on to the end, we shall fight in France, we shall fight on the seas and oceans, we shall fight with growing confidence and growing strength in the air, we shall defend our island, whatever the cost may be, we shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills;”

In 1950, William Faulkner was honoured with a Nobel Prize for his significant contributions to the American novel. This was the time when the Soviet Union had found the possible implications of the use of the atomic bomb, and people had begun to live in the fear of annihilation. In his Nobel Prize Acceptance Speech, Faulkner urged writers of various genres to think and write beyond the fear of destruction, and instead write materials that would lift the human spirit. The powerful message included: “I believe that man will not merely endure: he will prevail. He is immortal, not because he alone among creatures has an inexhaustible voice, but because he has a soul, a spirit capable of compassion and sacrifice and endurance. The poet’s, the writer’s, duty is to write about these things. It is his privilege to help man endure by lifting his heart, by reminding him of the courage and honor and hope and pride and compassion and pity and sacrifice which have been the glories of his past. The poet’s voice need not merely be the record of man, it can be one of the props, the pillars to help him endure and prevail.”

Undoubtedly, effective speeches have a long-lasting impact on the minds of the listeners, and they elevate the levels of awareness or actions the speaker intends to raise or catalyze.

Q31. The main idea of the passage is that

  1. All leaders should be accomplished public speakers.
  2. An impactful speech can convey a strong message to the listeners.
  3. A speech should sound pleasing to the ears of the listeners.
  4. Public speakers should be bold and argumentative.

Q32. The tone of the Surrender Speech is

  1. Satiric
  2. Optimistic
  3. Poignant
  4. Narcissistic

Q33. It is evident that through his speech, Churchill wished to his countrymen.

  1. Inform, about the challenges that arise in a war-torn country.
  2. Warn, against the futility of war.
  3. Remind, how their endeavours to fight against the Nazi rule had failed miserably.
  4. Reassure, that they would combat fiercely against their enemy under all circumstances.

Q34. Which one of the following is the least likely to be used to describe Churchill?

  1. Resolute
  2. Undaunted
  3. Complacent
  4. Unwavering

Q35. In the sentence: ‘The poet’s voice need not merely be the record of man, it can be one of the props, the pillars to help him endure and prevail’ Faulkner has used to convey the power of a poet’s writings.

  1. A metaphor
  2. A simile
  3. An onomatopoeia
  4. A transferred epithet

Passage 8:

As a six-year-old child-beggar, Saroo slept off in a stationary train in Khandwa, Madhya Pradesh; however, when he woke up, he found himself in an empty compartment of a train thundering towards Kolkata where he spent a couple of weeks in a state of panic and hopelessness. Finally, he ended up in a local government adoption centre from where he was adopted by an Australian couple. Twenty five years later, Saroo felt the urge to trace his biological mother and see in what state she lived. Relentlessly, he used Google’s satellite feature to map the parts of the country that could have possibly been his own hometown. The search was a long and arduous one; nevertheless, the perseverance did pay. One eventful day, he met his mother; thereafter, he continued to keep in touch with her.

If technology can unite people with their loved ones, it can also make them distant. The unlimited variety of applications (apps) available to toddlers, teenagers and adults might have revolutionized their lives for the better, but these very apps have snatched away the joys of long naturewalks; they have encroached upon the time and space that people earlier used for physical interaction; they have drilled deep chasms of loneliness in the lives of countless numbers of people.

Simple pleasures of life include visiting friends and relatives, playing matches in open spaces, interacting with people in markets, public libraries and clubs. However, with the escalating rage of using apps like those for social media, playing virtual games, and homedelivery services, these joyous moments are fading into oblivion, and the pall of loneliness is getting heavier by the day.

Where are we heading to? Are we going to allow ourselves to be swamped by apps? Are we going to allow socialmedia to engulf us in a deluge of loneliness and isolation? Are we going to drive ourselves to situations that will ultimately demand mental and physical therapies to regain normalcy? Do we not know that physical interaction is as essential for mental health as food and water is for physical health?

Earlier, social isolation was mostly experienced by some of the elderly people who were devoid of an occupation, and bereft of company of their loved ones. Unfortunately today, an unhealthy solitude prevails among numerous children, teenagers and adults too; subsequently, there is an alarming increase in the demand for mental health therapy practitioners.

The necessity of engaging psychologists in schools and colleges is evidently on the rise. The psychologists are required to identify and address the learning and behavioral needs of students who approach them for guidance; moreover, if required, the professionals are expected to help them in strengthening their emotional, social and academic skills.

Regardless how alarming the situation might be, it is never too late. If people revert to the earlier trend of shopping off-line, going for naturewalks, playing outdoors games, and catching up with friends in their homes or cafes more frequently, they can keep their heads firmly well above the ocean of loneliness.

Q36. From the passage it is evident that Saroo’s desire to find his mother

  1. Ended up being a distant dream.
  2. Inspired him to use Google’s satellite feature intermittently.
  3. Waned as time went by.
  4. Did not slacken till he succeeded.

Q37. In the sentence ‘these very apps have snatched away the joys of long nature-walks;’ the author has

  1. Satirized nature
  2. Metaphorized apps
  3. Personified apps
  4. None of the above

Q38. From the passage one can conclude that

  1. It is impossible for people to reduce the usage of apps.
  2. There is a direct correlation between loneliness and excessive usage of social- media apps.
  3. The usage of technology is as essential for mental-health as food and water is for physical health.
  4. All senior citizens are lonely because they are not tech-savvy.

Q39. From the passage it can be inferred that presently in many educational institutions

  1. The number of teachers who pass the buck to psychologists is on the rise.
  2. Special emphasis is being laid on the mental and emotional health of the students.
  3. The usage of educational apps is being discouraged significantly.
  4. All the students feel the need to be counseled by psychologists.

Q40. In the concluding paragraph of the given passage, the writer’s tone can be best described as

  1. Optimistic
  2. Despairing
  3. Laudatory
  4. Apologetic

Checkout: Reading Comprehension for CLAT

Passage 9:

“Wash! Wash! Wash your hands!” That’s been the safety-mantra ever since the pandemic COVID-19 began swamping the world. Undoubtedly, washing hands has proven to be the best way to keep germs at bay. Unfortunately, the medical practitioner who first promoted the importance of this simple activity was subjected to intense humiliation, and ultimately declared insane!

Ignaz Semmelweis was a Hungarian doctor. In 1847, as an obstetrician, he was disturbed that post-delivery, almost every third woman died of an unexpected malady. He observed that as a part of the set routine, medical students and doctors would examine and study the corpses in the mortuary, and then come for rounds to the maternity wards. Here, without washing their hands, they would examine expectant mothers. After making numerous hypothesis and observations, he was convinced that when doctors washed their hands before examining the women in the ward, the number of deaths due to serious infection declined. He shared his observations with his colleagues and many others working in the field of medicine, but unfortunately he could not provide any concrete evidence to his theory. Sadly, due to the vehement criticism that he received, he went into depression. Furthermore, Ignaz strived to prove his point so relentlessly that it led to the belief that he had lost his mind. In 1865, a doctor deceptively lured him into an asylum for the insane, and two weeks of the brutal treatment that was meted out to him by the attendants led to his untimely death. About twenty years later, when the world became more receptive to the works of scientists like Louis Pasteur and Joseph Lister, awareness regarding germs that cause diseases began to spread. This is the time when Ignaz was honoured with titles like Father of Hand Hygiene and Saviour of Mothers- an honour much too late!

Some of the most celebrated artists have earned fame much after their deaths. It is tragic that Vincent Van Gogh’s awe-inspiring work was labeled as strange and amateur by most of the critics of his time. It is believed that he sold only one or two painting in his lifetime, and that too for a meager amount. Today, every single painting of Vincent Van Gogh paintings is worth millions of dollars.

Franz Kafka was a proficient writer, but when he published a few pieces of his writings, he received immense criticism. Before his death in 1924, he handed over his unpublished novels and short stories to his friend Max Brod, and urged him to destroy them; however, Brod got the manuscripts published. Today, Franz is acclaimed as one of the major fiction writers of the twentieth century; the novels titled The Trial published in 1925, and The Castle published in 1926 are considered two of his masterpieces.

Perhaps, if humans were more tolerant and amenable to change, innovative concepts, theories and creations, the deserving would live to experience the glory and honour they rightfully deserve.

Q41. The main idea of the passage is that

  1. All original theories and works should receive unreserved acceptance.
  2. Many undeserving innovators have been honoured after their demise.
  3. Creativity must never be inhibited.
  4. Numerous innovators have found recognition and appreciation of their works posthumously.

Q42. From the passage it is evident that Dr. Ignaz’s theory was rejected because

  1. He could not substantiate it
  2. The doctors did not want him to regulate their work ethics
  3. He had been declared insane
  4. Joseph Lister and Louis Pasteur had already discovered germs

Q43. From the passage one can conclude that the art critics who Van Gogh’s works were.

  1. Applauded, pessimistic.
  2. Censured, hypercritical.
  3. Denounced, tolerant.
  4. Acclaimed, rigid.

Q44. From the passage it can be inferred that Max Brod

  1. Was of the opinion that Franz had not reached out to the right critics
  2. Decried Franz’s writings
  3. Considered it unsacred to destroy any manuscript
  4. Appreciated and valued Franz’s works

Q45. The word relentlessly in the passage can be best replaced by the word

  1. Irresolutely
  2. Recklessly
  3. Unabatedly
  4. Unabashedly

Passage 10:

Crypto currencies are a terrible thing. They are the essence of a Ponzi scheme whose value is based entirely on a greater fool prepared to buy it. The promise of alchemy-turning lead into gold has bewitched humanity throughout the ages and crypto currencies are just the latest alchemy. Do not get me wrong, if rich people want to lose their money, in this or any other way, they should be allowed to do so. The rich should be the vanguards of new things in case something unforeseen and good falls out of them. But we need to protect those vulnerable consumers whose lives are such that almost any get-rich-quick schemes will be seductive, and seven out of 10 times, they will lose their life savings. Crypto currencies are today’s South Sea Bubble – one of the earliest recorded financial bubbles that took place in the 1720s’ Britain. Meme-based currencies like Dogecoin, Dogelon Mars and Doge Dash remind me of the infamous plan of one company during the South Sea Bubble to raise money “for carrying on an undertaking of great advantage; but nobody to know what it is.”

The crypto currency bubble is worse than tulip mania. Through the veil of technology, crypto currency enthusiasts are leaning on policy-makers to permit them to be exempt from regulation, privatize money, and make money so disconnected from the economy that it would reap financial disaster. There are many reasons to avoid financial disasters, but one of them is that they ratchet up poverty and inequality. The current money-credit system is not perfect, but like democracy, it is the worst system barring all the others. It has evolved from the ashes of the system crypto currency enthusiasts are trying to resurrect.

The current system is vulnerable to attack because money is little understood. Crypto currency enthusiasts have attracted a following based on the fiction that the central bank or government creates money and are busy debasing it in their self-interest. This is not the case, but then again, there is some overlap between crypto currency advocates, conspiracy theorists, and anti-vaxxers. The time has come for someone to stand up for the current fiat money system and explain that while it could be better still, it has been associated with far more growth, much more distributed, and has responded better to economic crisis than what came before.

In today’s money-credit system, banks create money when they issue a loan and place the loan’s proceeds into the account of their customers, creating a deposit. Money is, in fact, a tradable debt. The bank’s deposit can be used as cash because the bank is a regulated issuer of loans and deposit-taker, which gives the deposit credibility and convertibility. The central bank only influences the creation of money indirectly by its regulatory requirement that a proportion of the loans need to be funded by shareholder’s profits. They need to have skin in the game. Money creation then is based on thousands of separate decisions by loan officers and is more distributed than a centralized algorithm like Bitcoin. And its supply is determined by the private demand for loans, which means it is closely aligned to the economy.

Q46. Which of the following does best describe attitude of the author towards rich people?

  1. Concerned
  2. Assiduous
  3. Indifferent
  4. Sympathetic

Q47. Which of the following is true in the context of the passage?

  1. The author defends the current money-credit system.
  2. The author rejects the idea that the central bank or government creates money and are busy debasing it in their self-interest.\
  3. The author backs the protection of poor from menace of crypto currencies.
  4. All the above

Q48. Which rhetorical device is employed in ‘crypto currencies are just the latest alchemy’?

  1. Antithesis
  2. Metaphor
  3. Personification
  4. Synecdoche

Q49. Which of the following does best describe the passage?

  1. Argumentative and explanatory
  2. Descriptive and argumentative
  3. Narrative and explanatory
  4. Expository and argumentative

Q50. What do the crypto currency enthusiasts rely on?

  1. Exemption from regulation
  2. Privatization of money
  3. Disconnection of money from the economy
  4. All the above

Read: Improve Reading Speed for CLAT

Question No.Answer
Q1B
Q2C
Q3A
Q4C
Q5B
Q6A
Q7C
Q8C
Q9A
Q10B
Q11B
Q12B
Q13C
Q14D
Q15A
Q16B
Q17A
Q18C
Q19D
Q20D
Q21A
Q22B
Q23D
Q24B
Q25B
Q26D
Q27B
Q28A
Q29D
Q30C
Q31B
Q32C
Q33D
Q34C
Q35A
Q36D
Q37C
Q38B
Q39B
Q40A
Q41D
Q42A
Q43B
Q44D
Q45C
Q46C
Q47D
Q48B
Q49A
Q50D

Also read: CLAT OMR Sheet Filling Guide

Preparing effectively for the English section of the CLAT exam requires a strategic approach that encompasses various aspects of language learning:

1. Enhance Reading Skills

Build a habit of reading daily. Focus on diverse sources such as novels, newspapers, journals, and magazines to improve vocabulary and comprehension skills.

While reading, try to analyze the structure, main ideas, and arguments presented. This practice will enhance your ability to quickly grasp the essence of reading passages in the exam.

2. Develop a Strong Vocabulary

Make it a point to learn new words every day. Use flashcards, mobile apps, or word lists to memorize and review vocabulary.

Understand how words are used in different contexts by seeing them in sentences. This helps in retaining words and understanding their nuances.

3. Master English Grammar

Refresh your knowledge of English grammar rules including tenses, prepositions, conjunctions, and sentence structure.

Regularly solve grammar exercises. Use the best CLAT preparation books and online resources to reinforce grammatical concepts.

4. Practice with Past Papers

Working through CLAT previous year papers under timed conditions can help simulate the test environment and highlight your strengths and weaknesses.

After solving each paper, thoroughly review your answers. Focus on understanding mistakes to avoid repeating them.

5. Work on Comprehension Skills

Regularly practice with unseen passages. Focus on speed reading techniques to improve your ability to scan the text quickly for relevant information.

Furthermore, work on different types of comprehension questions, such as those asking for main points, details, inferences, and vocabulary in context.

6. Enhance Writing and Paraphrasing Skills

Summarize articles or CLAT English passages in your own words. This helps in improving your ability to express ideas concisely and accurately.

Practice rewriting sentences or paragraphs to refine your ability to understand and convey information effectively.

7. Mock Tests and Time Management

Take full-length CLAT mock tests to get accustomed to the pressure and format of the actual exam. Develop strategies to allocate sufficient time to each section of the test, ensuring that you can complete all sections within the given time.

8. Seek Feedback

Join study groups where you can discuss and solve English sections with peers. This can provide new insights and also expose you to different approaches to solving questions.

Moreover, consider seeking help from a tutor or joining the offline or online coaching for CLAT by Law Prep Tutorial to get personalized guidance and feedback.

1. Overlooking Instructions

Not reading instructions carefully can lead to misunderstanding question requirements, especially in questions of CLAT English involving multiple steps or specific instructions.

2. Rushing Through Passages

Speed reading without proper comprehension can cause you to miss crucial details or nuances in the text. This mistake is particularly costly in CLAT reading comprehension questions.

3. Ignoring Context

In CLAT vocabulary questions, ignoring the context in which a word is used can lead to incorrect answers. Always consider the sentence or paragraph surrounding a vocabulary item.

4. Skimming Answers

Quickly glancing over answers without properly evaluating them against the question can lead to mistakes. Take the time to consider each option carefully, especially in close call situations.

5. Poor Time Management

Spending too much time on difficult questions and leaving inadequate time for others can negatively affect your overall score. Practice managing your time effectively to ensure you can answer all questions.

Read: Time Management Tips for CLAT

6. Dependency on Guesswork

Over-reliance on guessing rather than knowledge and deduction can lead to errors. While educated guesses can help when you’re stuck, they shouldn’t replace a thorough understanding and analysis of the content.

7. Failure to Review

Not reviewing your answers, especially in sections where you’re unsure, can prevent you from catching and correcting simple mistakes.

8. Neglecting Grammar and Sentence Structure

Underestimating the importance of grammar and proper sentence construction can lead to errors in sentence correction and improvement questions. Regularly review key grammar rules and practice applying them.

9. Inadequate Practice

Insufficient practice with diverse question types and difficulty levels can leave you unprepared for the variety and depth of questions on the exam.

10. Stress and Anxiety

Allowing exam stress to affect your performance can impact your concentration and decision-making skills. Develop techniques to stay calm and focused under exam conditions.

Wrapping Up:

Mastering the English section of the CLAT requires diligent practice, a deep understanding of the language, and effective exam strategies. To truly excel and ensure you are fully prepared, consider enrolling in a specialized CLAT coaching program. 

Law Prep Tutorial offers the best offline and online CLAT coaching, equipped with expert instructors, extensive resources, and personalized guidance to help you navigate through every aspect of your CLAT 2025 or CLAT 2026 preparation. 

Join Law Prep Tutorial and elevate your chances of securing a top score in CLAT, setting a solid foundation for your legal career. Don’t miss the opportunity to learn from the best and achieve your dreams.

To help you prepare effectively, we have shared the collection of CLAT previous year papers. These papers provide valuable insights into the exam format and types of questions asked, helping you refine your study strategy.

CLAT 2024 Question PaperClick to download
CLAT 2023 Question PaperClick to download
CLAT 2022 Question PaperClick to download
CLAT 2021 Question PaperClick to download
CLAT 2020 Question PaperClick to download
CLAT 2019 Question PaperClick to download

Checkout CLAT previous Year papers of 15 years.

Suggested Reading:

How to Prepare for CLAT

NLUs in India

NLSIU Bangalore: All Details

CLAT Eligibility Criteria

CLAT Logical Reasoning

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