I'm not sure what advice to offer to improve your skills. You claim to be flustered by the nuanced questions. But is that really the problem? I really don't know.
There were quite a few questions on the Texas licensing exam that I had not seen during my licensing courses or test prep... and the choices provided usually all seemed reasonable. So the key for me was to relax, think carefully, and choose the BEST answer of those provided.
But I did find these statistics from TREC. You may find them interesting:
Salesperson National First time Pass Rate from 9/1/06 - 8/31/07
71.0%
Salesperson State First time Pass Rate from 9/1/06 - 8/31/07
67.2%
Broker National First time Pass Rate from 9/1/06 - 8/31/07
82.9%
Broker State First time Pass Rate from 9/1/06 - 8/31/07
78.6%
Professional Inspector First time Pass Rate from 9/1/06 - 8/31/07
37.2%
Real Estate Inspector First time Pass Rate from 9/1/06 - 8/31/07
54.8%
So it looks like about one out of three applicants fail their first go-round. Be persistent. You'll get there!