Every lesson in this module trained one component: a budget, a location routine, one decision rule per question type. This final lesson assembles them into a single test-day protocol — passage order, time checkpoints, answer-sheet discipline, and the endgame rule for the last five minutes. Nothing here is new; everything here is the order in which the pieces fire.
Before question one: the 60-second setup
The moment the test starts, spend one minute buying insurance:
- Write your checkpoints — 17 and 37 — on the question booklet (or fix them mentally on computer, anchored to the on-screen clock).
- Flip through all three passages. Ten seconds each: topic, length, question types. You are checking for one thing — a Passage 2 that looks nastier than Passage 3 (it happens), or a question-type mix that changes your plan (a heavy matching set means index-first, per matching information).
- Confirm the order. Default: 1 → 2 → 3, on the 17/20/23 split from the time budget. Change the order only for a strong reason found in step 2; never change the totals. If you do reorder, write the new checkpoint times down — a reordered plan with old checkpoints is worse than no plan.
Inside each passage: the standard cycle
Same cycle, all three passages:
- Structural skim, 2–3 minutes. First and last sentence per paragraph, a 3-word margin label per paragraph (the gist sprint from speed drills). If the passage has matching headings, this skim is that question set — do it as you skim.
- Sequence the question sets. Mechanical and ordered sets first (completion, TFNG, short answer), shuffled sets after (matching), global MCQ last. Finish each set before starting the next.
- Per question: keyword → scan → confirm by meaning (location discipline), then the one decision rule that the question type owns.
- Circuit breaker at 90 seconds: no located sentence → guess, mark, move. In Passage 3, run the full two-pass triage from passage 3 density.
- Answer sheet as you go — see below. Then next set, next passage, no ceremony between them.
Answer-sheet discipline
Reading has no transfer time. The rules that protect you from the stupidest way to lose marks:
- Paper: write each answer on the answer sheet at the moment you confirm it. Never batch, never "transfer at the end." After every shuffled set (matching types), run a 10-second alignment check: does the question number under your pencil match the row you are writing in? Off-by-one errors are born in shuffled sets.
- Completion answers: copy from the passage letter by letter, inside the word limit, form unchanged — the two mechanical checks from completion spoken silently every time.
- Computer: the alignment risk disappears; the flag button replaces it. Flags are for circuit-breaker skips only, and every flag must already have a guess entered behind it. A flagged blank is a promise to your future self that the endgame will not have time to keep.
- Legibility and case: block capitals are safest on paper; nobody ever lost a mark for writing too clearly.
The checkpoints, enforced
- Minute 17 — starting Passage 2. If not: finish the current question, guess anything open in Passage 1, go. No renegotiation; the passage you are leaving has already had its fair share.
- Minute 37 — starting Passage 3. Same enforcement, harder emotionally, more important — the marks you protect are the 13 waiting in Passage 3.
- Minute 55 — stop answering new questions. The endgame begins.
The endgame rule: minutes 55–60
The last five minutes have one law:
No blank boxes. Anywhere. Ever.
There is no penalty for wrong answers, so a blank is a donated mark. In order:
- Sweep the answer sheet for blanks (or flags on computer). Fill every one — this outranks everything else you could do with these minutes.
- Blind-guess policy, decided now, not on the day: TFNG/YNNG un-located statements → NOT GIVEN, otherwise TRUE/YES; MCQ → your surviving option after any elimination, or a fixed letter if you have nothing; matching → any unused letter; completion → the most plausible noun from the right territory (a wrong word costs nothing; a blank guarantees nothing).
- Time remaining after the sweep goes to your marked circuit-breaker questions, best-located first — the ones where you were choosing between two answers, because those are one re-read from a mark.
- Final 30 seconds, paper: one full alignment scan — forty rows, forty answers, no row skipped.
After the test: close the loop
A full test that isn't logged is half wasted. Within an hour: score it, and give every wrong answer its five-column row in the error log — the cause tally decides what next week trains. Slot the whole cycle — full test, log, targeted drill, next full test — into one of our study plans; the protocol is the test-day engine, the plan is the calendar it runs on.
Your drill
The dress rehearsal — 60 minutes plus 20 of review.
- Sit Reading 2026-06 Test 2 under the complete protocol: 60-second setup, checkpoints written, standard cycle, answer sheet live, endgame at minute 55. Simulate honestly — no pauses, no dictionary, answers onto a real answer sheet or the on-screen form.
- Afterwards, grade the protocol before the answers: checkpoints hit? blanks at minute 60 (must be zero)? circuit-breaker skips marked and revisited? Any protocol failure is next week's rehearsal target, independent of the score.
- Score, log every miss, tally causes.
- Repeat weekly — Reading 2025-11 Test 3 next — same protocol every time, until test day is simply the eighth rehearsal with different wallpaper.
That is the entire module in one sentence: a budget you enforce, a location routine you trust, one decision rule per question type, and an endgame with no blanks. Run the protocol until it is boring — boring, on test day, is exactly what band jumps feel like.