Visualize the events and characters you read because then you can picture what your reading and you may be able to view the situations from a different perspective. If you skim the piece of literature then you can not truly nor fully understand the story. If you read it the last minute then you are more focused on getting the work done and you won't catch all the details within the story elements. Also, from experience, if you read anything last minute you will most likely get more wrong because you can not fully gather all the story and then when you answer questions fast you may skip an easy answer and put the wrong one. It is better to read through and picture everything. If you look at only at the headings then you definately won't understand the piece of literature because you will only get the huge situations but if you read the whole story slowly and visualize what your reading you will get everything in the middle which can be quite useful. The middle and connectors piece the story together and make it work. You can not just put gas in a car without wheels and expect it to drive.
I hope this helped I spent quite a bit of time and you can always change the wording a bit if you want :D Also, this is not an option but the best way to read a difficult piece of literature is to use context clues, look up words you do not know, visualize what you are reading, read slowly, read carefully, read multiple times, and ask yourself questions while reading.
