Read the relationship, not an isolated phrase
Begin by identifying what a question asks you to recover: a referent, the relation between two sentences, the writer's position, a character's supported feeling, or the effect of an expression. These are different tasks. For a referent such as それ, replace the word with a candidate phrase and reread the complete sentence. For a connective such as しかし, compare the direction of the statements on both sides rather than memorizing a translation alone. A summary must preserve the main claim and its important qualification; it should not turn a possibility into a certainty. In literary reading, a small gesture can support an inference, but it does not justify inventing an event that the passage never mentions. Classical vocabulary needs its historical sense, not merely the modern meaning of a similar spelling. After answering, underline the smallest piece of supplied text that supports the answer and identify the precise addition, reversal or exaggeration in each distractor.