Most students who get a reading question wrong understood the passage. They picked the wrong option because it said something true that the passage never said. What is being tested here is not knowledge but the ability to separate what a text states from what merely sounds right, and that is a technical skill, which means it improves quickly with the right practice.
It also travels. The same mechanics show up in school exams, in university entrance tests, in language certificates and in the long worded questions that maths papers now use.
What is actually being tested?
Staying inside the text. The question types vary, main idea, topic, the writer's attitude, the sentence that breaks the flow, filling a gap, but they measure the same thing: using what is written without importing anything from outside. In every one of them, the answer is already in the passage.
That is why "but this is how it works in reality" is the most expensive thought in this section. An option can be factually correct and still be the wrong answer, because the passage does not claim it.
Do you read the question or the passage first?
The question, then the passage, then the options. One line tells you what to look for, and reading with that in mind removes most of the need for a second pass.
Reading the options first actively hurts. Holding five statements in your head while you read splits your attention and anchors you to whichever one you read first. Keep the order: stem, passage, options.
Read with a pencil. Underlining the first and last sentences is often enough, because in most passages the writer's actual point sits in one of those two or in the combination of them.
What is the difference between topic and main idea?
The topic is what the passage is about; the main idea is what it says about it. "Urban transport" is a topic. "The answer to urban transport is not new roads but using existing lines properly" is a main idea. Choosing a judgement when the question asked for the topic, or a bare label when it asked for the main idea, is the same mistake twice.
A useful check: imagine your chosen option replacing the whole passage. Does it stand in for all of it, or only for one sentence? An option that correctly describes part of the passage is the most common trap in the section.
How do you spot the distractors?
Four patterns repeat, and knowing them improves both accuracy and speed.
Overgeneralisation: the passage says "in some cases" and the option says "always". Whenever you see absolutes, go back and check whether that certainty exists in the text. True but absent: an option that fits your general knowledge and has no basis in the passage. Narrowed scope: an option that summarises a single sentence instead of the whole. And reversal: the passage's relationship served back with cause and effect swapped.
After eliminating those, two options usually remain. Decide by going back to the passage, not by comparing the two options with each other. Arguing between options is how students end up answering a question the text never raised.
Gap-filling and odd-sentence-out questions?
Both ask about the internal logic, and both are solved at the connectives. For the sentence that breaks the flow, look at how each sentence attaches to the one before it rather than judging sentences one by one. The sentence that changes direction, not the one that changes subject, is usually the answer.
For a gap, the sentences on either side decide everything. If what follows begins with "therefore", the gap needs a cause; if it begins with "however", it needs a contrast. Say in your own words what kind of sentence belongs there before you look at the options, and you have nearly chosen it already.
How does reading speed actually improve?
By cutting regressions. The time lost in this section is rarely slow reading; it is going back to the same line two or three times. Regression usually comes from a lapse in attention rather than from reading ability, so the fix is holding focus for the length of a passage rather than any eye exercise.
There is a measurable drill for it. Run a finger along the line and do not allow yourself to go back, then summarise the passage in two sentences. If the summary holds, your pace is fine; if it does not, slow down. For the attention side, how to improve focus and our attention games are the useful parts, and the Schulte table works as a narrow eye-movement exercise.
The long-term answer is reading. Exam passages are built from essays, journalism and popular science, so a student who reads those regularly meets a familiar structure in the exam. Twenty books in a year tends to beat the same hours spent only on practice questions.
How many questions a day?
Around fifteen, every day, at the same time. Consistency beats volume here because this is a habit skill; fifty questions once a week is not the same thing.
The five minutes after counts too. Next to each mistake, write one word for why: generalisation, scope, not in text, attention. Two weeks later, look at which word repeats, and you have found your own weak pattern.