What are the skills required to answer Reading Comprehension questions accurately?

The purpose of Reading Comprehension is to develop and test a students' information retention and utilization skills by reading a large set of text. It also tests students' attention span and focus to critically analyse and interpret information presented in a large set of text.

Reading Comprehension passages can be broadly divided into three types, which are Literal, Inferential and Analytical or Critical. The Literal Comprehension is the simplest type, where the questions are direct, the other two need students or candidates to utilize critical thinking and analytical ability to answer the questions.

The word comprehension literally means to read and infer the meaning or message conveyed by the author. Reading Comprehension is a common English exercise wherein a passage is given to the students or test takers, followed by questions from it. The answers have to be derived from the passage itself. While for the Literal Reading Comprehension questions, answers can be fetched directly from the passage, for the other types, such as Inferential or analytical, students have to go beyond the literal meaning and utilize their understanding and knowledge derived from the passage to answer the questions.