Students often assume that understanding a difficult sentence requires translating every word before moving on. A reading coach tested a different routine. Students first located the central subject and finite verb, marked any contrast or cause signal, and gave themselves ninety seconds to recover the main relation. If one technical word remained unclear but the relation was secure, they marked the word and continued to the paragraph's conclusion. They returned only when that sentence controlled the answer. This routine did not encourage careless skipping. Every marked sentence needed a return clue, such as “check the cause” or “confirm the scope.” Students who merely moved on without a clue often forgot to return. The useful distinction was therefore not between persistence and surrender, but between structured postponement and unrecorded avoidance.