Reading Speed - 60 Day Strategy

Struggling with reading speed for CLAT 2027?

The goal is simple: build reading speed consistently without spending hours every day. The routine discussed in this video can be completed in approximately 30–50 minutes daily and is designed to improve not just how fast you read, but how quickly you understand passages, process questions, and eliminate options.

📖 How to Read Better and Faster by Norman Lewis
A structured starting point for students who want to actively improve reading speed. The target is to complete the book within approximately two weeks while actually doing the exercises rather than simply reading through it.
https://drive.google.com/drive/u/4/folders/1yH_YIwl10Sjc1FLBdQm2_6Pn8VmTGJD2

📰 Daily Editorial Practice
Use The Hindu editorials as daily CLAT-style reading practice.

For each editorial:

• Time yourself while reading
• Write a short summary covering the main idea and arguments
• Create a mind map tracing the author's argument from beginning to end

These exercises help develop comprehension, retention, argument identification, and passage structure recognition.
https://clatcommunity.com/dashboard/daily-highlighted-newspaper

🧠 Summarisation & Mind Mapping

For summarisation, write at least five clear points covering:

• Main idea
• Central argument
• Author's contention
• Purpose of the passage
• Overall conclusion

For mind mapping, trace the progression of the author's reasoning from the beginning of the passage to the conclusion.

We have also created an AI prompt that can help you evaluate your own summaries and mind maps after completing them independently.

📚 Aeon Essays

Aeon essays are deliberately difficult.

The purpose is not to understand every sentence perfectly. The objective is to become comfortable reading complicated sentence structures and unfamiliar arguments under pressure. Treat this as resistance training for reading.

https://aeon.co/essays

🗞️ The Guardian

Read approximately 4–5 Guardian editorials regularly.

Exposure to more refined argumentation and sentence structures can help you become faster at identifying assumptions, arguments, inferences, conclusions, and nuances in passages.

https://www.theguardian.com/uk/commentisfree

⚡ Reading Speed Is NOT Just Words Per Minute

One of the biggest mistakes students make is blaming slow mock attempts entirely on passage-reading speed.

Your total time also includes:

• Understanding the question
• Interpreting what is being asked
• Comparing options
• Eliminating incorrect answers
• Choosing between two close options

Many students actually lose more time while evaluating options than while reading the passage itself. For CLAT, improving elimination speed is therefore just as important as improving raw reading speed.

🎯 A Useful Timing Rule

A practical benchmark is approximately:

1 minute = 1 mark

If a passage has 6 questions, you effectively have approximately 6 minutes to complete the passage and its questions. That includes both reading and answering. This rule obviously does not apply to GK section.

So while improving your reading speed matters, you should also track how much time you spend on individual questions and option elimination during mocks.

📌 Daily Reading Routine

Your reading-speed routine should broadly include:

1. How to Read Better and Faster — Norman Lewis
2. Editorial Summarisation
3. Editorial Mind Mapping
4. Aeon Essays
5. Guardian Editorials

Consistency matters more than collecting dozens of resources.

Do the same exercises daily, track your speed, and evaluate whether comprehension is improving alongside speed.

Regards,
Team CC