Keep reading. Passages are written to include some words above your level, so the skill being tested is pulling enough meaning from the words around the gap to answer the question — not decoding every character.

You can often get the category, which is usually enough. The water radical 氵 points to liquids (河 river, 海 sea, 洗 wash), the heart radical 忄 to emotions (怕 fear, 忙 busy), the speech radical 讠 to language (说 speak, 语 language), and the hand radical 扌 to hand actions (打 hit, 找 look for).

No. The goal is to answer the question, not translate the passage. A reader working at about 80 percent comprehension who guesses the rest will finish; a reader who needs 100 percent will run out of time.

Three drills: cover a word you do know and guess it from context before checking; sort unfamiliar characters by radical and predict a rough meaning category; and read slightly above your level with a few unknown words per paragraph, pushing through without a dictionary on the first pass.