About the GED Language Arts, Reading Exam

Each exam will include: ■ one poem of 8–25 lines ■ one excerpt from a play ■ one commentary on the arts most likely about a visual art experience, such as a film, museum exhibit, or pain

 W h a t t o E x p e c t o n t h e L a n g u a g e A r t s , R e a d i n g E x a m

The Language Arts, Reading Exam tests your ability to understand both literary and nonfiction texts You will be asked to read these texts and then answer 40 multiple-choice questions about those passages One-quarter (25%)

of those questions will be based on nonfiction passages; the other 75% will be based on literary texts, including stories, poems, and plays You will have 65 minutes for this exam

Types of Passages

The reading passages on the GED, except poems, are typically between 200–400 words Most of the passages will

be excerpts from larger works Each exam will include:

■ one poem of 8–25 lines

■ one excerpt from a play

■ one commentary on the arts (most likely about a visual art experience, such as a film, museum exhibit, or

painting)

■ one business-related document (such as an excerpt from an employee manual)

C H A P T E R

About the GED Language Arts, Reading Exam

IN THIS chapter, you will learn all about the GED Language Arts,

Reading Test, including what kind of questions and reading passages

to expect

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The passages include literature from a wide range of

historical periods and literary movements You can

expect texts from three different time periods:

■ pre-1920 (ancient and classical literature)

■ 1920–1960 (modern literature)

■ 1960–present (contemporary literature)

The passages on the Language Arts, Reading Exam are

also carefully chosen to reflect the rich diversity of

writ-ers and themes in literature For example, your test may

include a poem by a Native American man, an excerpt

from a story by a Chinese American woman, and an

excerpt from a play about civil war in Africa

Defining Literature

Technically, the term literature means any written or

pub-lished text This can include everything from a classic

such as Mark Twain’s Huckleberry Finn to your latest

gro-cery shopping list Of course, most of us don’t curl up

next to a warm fire with our favorite shopping list or give

a computer manual to a friend as a birthday gift These

texts serve a function, but they do not necessarily provide

us with the pleasure of a literary text

Literary texts are fundamentally different from

func-tional texts Literary texts are valued for:

■ the messages they convey

■ the beauty of their forms

■ their emotional impact

While a functional text may have a practical message

and convey important or useful information, it does not

typically convey a message about values or human nature

as literary texts do A functional text also usually follows

a standard format and has little emotional impact

One generally thinks of fiction (invented stories) when

thinking of literary texts, but literary texts can also be

nonfiction (true stories) For example, Maya Angelou’s

autobiography I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings is

liter-ary, not functional, although it is the true story of her

life Similarly, “The Knife,” an essay by Richard Selzer,

describes his true experiences and reflections as a

sur-geon His amazement at the beauty and complexity of

the human body and the beauty of his descriptions and

style make it unquestionably a literary text

Literary Genres

There are many different types or genres of

lit-erature On the GED, you can expect literature from these genres:

Fiction:

➧novels

➧short stories

➧poems

➧drama Nonfiction:

➧autobiography/memoir

➧essays

➧commentary on the arts

➧business-related documents

Official GED literature describes 75% of the passages

on the Language Arts, Reading Exam as “literary” and 25% as “nonfiction.” Of course, nonfiction texts can also

be literary The nonfiction referred to here is the com-mentary on the arts and the business-related documents Each exam will have between seven and nine passages, with four to six questions for each passage Five to seven

of those passages will be literary (one or more poems, excerpts from plays, and excerpts from stories or novels, and possibly one or more excerpts from literary nonfic-tion text such as autobiographies or essays) Two to three

of those passages will be functional nonfiction (com-mentary and business documents)

Test Statistics

➧65 minutes

➧40 questions

➧7–9 reading passages

➧4–6 questions per passage

➧5–7 literary passages

➧2–3 nonfiction (functional) texts

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Types of Questions

There are four types of multiple-choice questions on the

Language Arts, Reading Exam:

1 Comprehension questions (20%) test your basic

understanding of what you read They may ask

you to restate information, summarize ideas,

identify specific facts or details, draw basic

con-clusions about the information presented, or

identify implications of the ideas you have just

read about For example, question 1 from the

pretest is a comprehension question:

The “he” that the speaker refers to in the poem is

a the poet.

b the speaker.

c an eagle.

d a man on a mountain.

e the reader.

2 Analysis questions (30–35%) test your ability to

break down information and explore

relation-ships between ideas (e.g., a main idea and a

sup-porting detail); distinguish between fact and

opinion; compare and contrast items and ideas;

recognize unstated assumptions; identify cause

and effect relationships; and make basic

infer-ences For example, question 7 from the pretest is

an analysis question:

After he extends his tour, John Wade sometimes

“went out of his way to confront hazard” (lines

25–26) He does this because

a he wants to die.

b he hopes it will help him forget.

c he thinks he is invincible.

d he hopes it will get him another promotion.

e he wants Kathy to think he is brave.

3 Synthesis questions (30–35%) ask you to

develop theories and hypotheses about the texts

In terms of reading comprehension, this is essen-tially an extension of the inference-making skill Questions may ask you to determine the author’s purpose or intent, infer cause and effect, infer how the author or a character feels about a related issue, or determine the effect of a particu-lar technique For example, question 3 from the pretest is a synthesis question:

The poet’s goal is most likely to

a make the reader feel as lonely as the eagle.

b paint a detailed picture of an eagle on a

mountain

c convey the magnificence and power of eagles.

d convince the reader to get involved in saving

endangered species

e tell a story about a special eagle.

4 Application questions (15%) ask you to use the

ideas from a passage in a different context For example, question 5 from the pretest is an appli-cation question:

If the poet could belong to a contemporary organization, which group might he join?

a NAACP

b The World Wildlife Fund

c National Human Rights Organization

d International Mountain Climbers Club

e The Vegetarian Society

Doing well on the Language Arts, Reading Exam requires both solid reading comprehension skills and an understanding of the types and elements of literature The rest of the chapters in this section will review read-ing comprehension strategies, the elements of each of the types of passages you will find on the exam, and specific tips for understanding each kind of text

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To u n d e r sta n d w h at you read, you use a combination of skills that together enable you to glean

meaning from a text These skills can be grouped into five basic and essential reading comprehension strategies:

1 Determining the main idea or theme

2 Identifying specific/supporting facts and details

3 Distinguishing between fact and opinion

4 Making inferences

5 Identifying cause and effect relationships

C H A P T E R

Reading Comprehension Strategies

READING, LIKE writing, is based on a few fundamental skills.

This chapter reviews five essential reading comprehension strategies, including finding the main idea and drawing logical conclusions from the text

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 D e t e r m i n i n g t h e M a i n I d e a

o r T h e m e

Standardized reading comprehension tests always have

questions about the main idea of the passage But just

what is the main idea, anyway, and why is it so

impor-tant? And how is the main idea different from the theme?

Often,students confuse the main idea,or theme,of a

pas-sage with its topic.But they are two very different things.The

topic or subject of a passage is what the passage is about.

Main idea and theme,on the other hand,are what the writer

wants to say about that subject For example, take another

look at the poem you read in the pretest,“The Eagle”:

The Eagle

He clasps the crag with crooked hands;

Close to the sun in lonely lands,

Ringed with the azure world, he stands

The wrinkled sea beneath him crawls;

He watches from his mountain walls,

And like a thunderbolt he falls

—Alfred Lord Tennyson, “The Eagle,” 1851

This poem is about an eagle, so an eagle is the topic of

the poem But that is not the theme of the poem Main

ideas and themes must express an attitude or an idea;

they need to say something about their subject.

Topic/Subject: what the passage is about

Main Idea: the overall fact, feeling, or thought

a writer wants to convey about his or her

subject

Theme: the overall meaning or idea of a work of

fiction, poetry, or drama

Main idea and theme are so important because they

are what the text adds up to The main idea or theme is

what holds all of the ideas in the passage together; it is

the writer’s main point Indeed, it is why the writer writes

in the first place: to express this idea

In “The Eagle,” the action and word choice in the

poem reveal how the poet feels about his subject The

image of a noble eagle standing on a mountain crag and

then suddenly plummeting toward the sea captures the

writer’s respect for this awesome bird This reverence for

the power and beauty of the eagle is the theme of the poem

To hold all the ideas in the passage together, a main

idea or theme needs to be sufficiently general That is, it

needs to be broad enough for all of the other ideas in the passage to fit underneath, like people underneath an umbrella For example, look at the following choices for the theme of “The Eagle”:

a Eagles often live on mountains.

b Eagles can swoop down from the sky very

quickly

c Eagles are powerful, majestic birds.

The only answer that can be correct is c, because this

is the idea that the whole poem adds up to It’s what holds

together all of the ideas in the poem Choices a and b are

both too specific to be the theme In addition, they do not

express attitude or feelings They simply state specific

facts

Finding the Main Idea in Nonfiction

Most nonfiction texts follow a very basic pattern of

general idea → specific support That is, the writer will

state the main idea he or she wants to convey about the topic and then provide support for that idea, usually in the form of specific facts and details This format can be diagrammed as follows:

In the following paragraph, for example, notice how the first sentence states a main idea (makes a general claim about surveillance cameras) The rest of the para-graph provides specific facts and details to show why this statement is true:

Surveillance cameras can provide two immensely important services One, they can help us find those who commit crimes, includ-ing thieves, kidnappers, vandals, and even mur-derers Two, they can serve as a powerful deterrent to crime A thief who plans to steal a car may think twice if he knows he will be caught on video A woman who hopes to kidnap

Main Idea

(general claim about the subject)

Supporting Idea

(specific fact or detail)

Supporting Idea

(specific fact or detail)

Supporting Idea

(specific fact or detail)

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a child may abandon her plans if she knows she

will be captured on film

This main idea → support structure works on two

levels: for the text as a whole and for each individual

sec-tion or paragraph within the text

Distinguishing Main Ideas from

Supporting Ideas

If you’re not sure whether something is a main idea or a

supporting idea, ask yourself the following question: Is

the sentence making a general statement, or is it

provid-ing specific information? In the followprovid-ing paragraph, for

example, most of the sentences except one are too

specific to be the main idea of the paragraph Only one

sentence—the first—is general enough to serve as an

“umbrella” or “net” for the whole paragraph

Many people are afraid of snakes, but most

snakes aren’t as dangerous as people think they

are There are more than 2,500 different species

of snakes around the world Only a small

per-centage of those species are poisonous, and only

a few species have venom strong enough to kill

a human being Furthermore, snakes bite only

1,000–2,000 people in the United States each

year, and only ten of those bites (that’s less than

1%) result in death Statistically, many other

ani-mals are far more dangerous than snakes In fact,

in this country, more people die from dog bites

each year than from snake bites

Notice how the first sentence makes a general claim

about snakes (that they “aren’t as dangerous as people

think they are”) Then, the rest of the sentences in the

paragraph provide details and specific facts that support

the main idea

Writers often provide clues that can help you

distin-guish between main ideas and their support Here are

some of the most common words and phrases used to

introduce specific examples:

for example for instance in particular

in addition furthermore some

others specifically

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These signal words usually mean that a supporting

fact or idea will follow If you are having trouble finding

the main idea of a paragraph, try eliminating sentences

that begin with these phrases (Notice that one of the

sentences in the snake paragraph begins with one of

these transitional words.)

Topic Sentences

In nonfiction texts, the overall main idea is supported by

ideas expressed in paragraphs Each of these paragraphs

also has its own main idea In fact, that’s the definition of

a paragraph: a group of sentences about the same idea The

sentence that expresses the main idea of a paragraph is

called a topic sentence The first sentence in both the

sur-veillance camera and snake paragraphs state their main

ideas Those sentences are therefore the topic sentences

for those paragraphs

Topic sentences are often located at the beginning of

paragraphs, but not always Sometimes, writers begin

with specific supporting ideas and lead up to the main

idea In this case, the topic sentence would probably be

at the end of the paragraph Notice how we can rewrite

the snake paragraph to put the topic sentence at the end

of the passage:

There are more than 2,500 different species of

snakes around the world Only a small

percent-age of those species are poisonous, and only a

few species have venom strong enough to kill a

human being Snakes bite only 1,000–2,000

peo-ple in the United States each year, and only ten

of those bites (that’s less than 1%) result in

death Statistically, many other animals are far

more dangerous than snakes In fact, in this

country, more people die from dog bites each

year than from snake bites Clearly, snakes

aren’t as dangerous as people think they are

Sometimes, the topic sentence is not found at the

beginning or end of a paragraph but rather somewhere

in the middle Other times, there isn’t a clear topic

sen-tence at all But that doesn’t mean the paragraph doesn’t

have a main idea It’s there, but the author has chosen not

to express it in a clear topic sentence In that case, you

will have to look carefully at the paragraph for clues

about the main idea

Finding an Implied Main Idea

When the main idea is implied, there’s no topic sentence,

so finding the main idea requires some good detective work If you look carefully at what is said and at the

structure, word choice, style, and tone of the passage, you

can figure out the main idea (These terms will be dis-cussed in more detail later in the chapter.)

For example, take a look at the following paragraph:

This summer, I read The Windows of Time.

Though it’s over 100 pages long, I read it in one afternoon I couldn’t wait to see what happened

to Evelyn, the main character But by the time I got to the end, I wondered if I should have spent

my afternoon doing something else The ending was so awful that I completely forgot I’d enjoyed most of the book

There’s no topic sentence here, but you should still be able to find the main idea Look carefully at what the writer says and how she says it What is she suggesting?

a The Windows of Time is a terrific novel.

b The Windows of Time is disappointing.

c The Windows of Time is full of suspense.

d The Windows of Time is a lousy novel.

The correct answer is choice b: The novel is

disap-pointing How can you tell that this is the main idea?

First, we can eliminate choice c, because it’s too specific

to be a main idea It deals only with one specific aspect

of the novel (its suspense)

Choices a, b, and d, on the other hand, all express a

larger idea—a general assertion about the quality of the novel But only one of these statements can actually serve

as a “net” for the whole paragraph Notice that while the

first few sentences praise the novel, the last two criticize

it (The word “but” at the beginning of the third sentence signals that the positive review is going to turn negative.) Clearly, this is a mixed review Therefore, the best answer

is b Choice a is too positive and doesn’t account for the

“awful” ending Choice d, on the other hand, is too

neg-ative and doesn’t account for the suspense and interest in

the main character But choice b allows for both positive

and negative—when a good thing turns bad, one often feels disappointed

Here’s another example In this passage, word choice

is more important, so read carefully

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Fortunately, none of Toby’s friends had ever seen

the apartment where Toby lived with his mother

and sister Sandwiched between two burnt-out

buildings, his two-story apartment building

was by far the ugliest one on the block It was a

real eyesore: peeling orange paint (orange!),

bro-ken windows, crooked steps, crooked

every-thing He could just imagine what his friends

would say if they ever saw this poor excuse for a

building

Which of the following expresses the main idea

of this paragraph?

a Toby wishes he could move to a nicer

building

b Toby wishes his dad still lived with them.

c Toby worries about what his friends would

think of where he lives

d Toby is sad because he doesn’t have any

friends

From the description, we can safely assume that Toby

doesn’t like his apartment building and wishes he could

move to a nicer building (choice a) But that idea isn’t

general enough to cover the whole paragraph, because it

doesn’t say anything about his friends Choice d doesn’t

say anything about his building, so it’s not broad enough

either Besides, the first sentence states that Toby has

friends We know that Toby lives only with his mother

and little sister, so we might assume that he wishes his

dad still lived with them (choice b) But there’s nothing

in the paragraph to support that assumption and

this idea doesn’t include the two main topics of the

paragraph—Toby’s building and Toby’s friends

What the paragraph adds up to is that Toby is

embar-rassed about his building, and he’s glad none of his

friends has seen it (choice c) This is the main idea The

paragraph opens with the word “fortunately,” so we

know that he thinks it’s a good thing none of them have

been there Plus, look at the word choice Notice how the

building is described It’s “by far the ugliest on the block,”

which is saying a lot, since it’s stuck between two

burnt-out buildings The writer calls it an “eyesore” and repeats

“orange” with an exclamation point to emphasize how

ugly the color is Everything’s “crooked” in this “poor

excuse for a building.” He’s ashamed of where he lives

Determining Theme in Literature

Theme is the overall message or idea that the writer

wants to convey Like a main idea, the theme is different

from the subject in that the theme says something about

the subject For example, take John Donne’s poem

“Death Be Not Proud.” The subject of the poem is death But the theme of the poem says something about death.

The poem’s message is that death is a gift for those who believe in God

Sonnet 72 “Death be not proud, though some have called thee”

DEATH be not proud, though some have called thee

Mighty and dreadful, for, thou art not so, For those whom thou think’st, thou dost overthrow,

Die not, poor death, nor yet canst thou kill me From rest and sleep, which but thy pictures bee, Much pleasure, then from thee, much more must flow,

And soonest our best men with thee do go, Rest of their bones, and soul’s delivery

Thou art slave to fate, chance, kings, and desperate men,

And dost with poison, war, and sickness dwell, And poppy, or charms can make us sleep as well, And better then thy stroke; why swell’st thou then? One short sleep past, we wake eternally,

And death shall be no more; Death, thou shalt die

The main idea of a text is the thought that holds everything together Likewise, the theme of a work of lit-erature is the thought that holds together the characters and action It’s the idea that guides every choice the writer makes throughout the text

For example, look at the poem “A Poison Tree,” from

William Blake’s Songs of Innocence and Experience The poem has four stanzas (groups of lines in a poem, much

like a paragraph is a group of lines in an essay or story) Read the poem carefully and read it out loud, too,

because poetry is meant to be heard as well as read.

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A Poison Tree

I was angry with my friend:

I told my wrath, my wrath did end wrath = anger

I was angry with my foe; foe = enemy

I told it not, my wrath did grow

And I water’d it in fears,

Night & morning with my tears;

And I sunned it with smiles, deceitful = causing others

And with soft deceitful wiles to believe what is not true

wiles = trickery, deceit

And it grew both by day and night,

Till it bore an apple bright

And my foe beheld it shine, beheld = saw

And he knew that it was mine

And into my garden stole

When the night had veil’d the pole; veiled = hidden

In the morning glad I see

My foe outstretchd beneath the tree

To understand Blake’s theme, you need to look

care-fully at what happened and then look at why it

hap-pened In the first stanza, Blake sets up two situations

First, the speaker (the “voice” or “narrator” of the poem)

is angry with his friend (line 1) and he tells his friend

about it (line 2) As a result, the anger goes away (line 2—

“my wrath did end”) But he acts differently with his

enemy He doesn’t tell his foe about his anger (line 4),

and as a result, the anger grows (line 4)

In the second stanza, the speaker “water’d” his wrath

in fears and “sunned” his wrath with smiles and wiles

Blake isn’t being literal here; rather, he’s drawing a

com-parison between the speaker’s anger to something that

grows with water and sun It’s like some kind of plant

How do you know exactly what it is? Blake tells you in

two key places: in the title and in the last line The poem

is called “The Poison Tree.”“Tree” is mentioned again in

the last line of the poem

The kind of comparison is called a metaphor, and it is

an important clue to the meaning of the poem Blake

could have compared the speaker’s anger to anything,

but he chose to compare it to a tree Trees have deep,

strong roots and often flower or bear fruit (This tree

bears an apple.) They need some nurturing (sun and

water) to grow

In the third stanza, the foe sees the speaker’s apple In

the fourth, he sneaks into the speaker’s garden at night

Finally, at the end of the poem, the foe is killed by the poi-sonous apple (the apple poisoned by the speaker’s wrath) That is what happens in the poem, but what does it all add up to? What does it mean? In other words, what is the theme?

Look again at the action Cause and effect are central

to the theme of this poem What does the speaker do? He

tells his friend about his anger What doesn’t the speaker do? He doesn’t tell his enemy about his anger What

hap-pens to his anger, then? It grows and grows and it offers fruit that tempts his enemy And what happens to his enemy? He steals the apple, but it is the fruit of anger It

is poisonous and it kills him Thus, the idea that best summarizes the idea of the poem is this: If you don’t talk about your anger, it can be deadly This is the message or

“lesson” of the poem

In many poems, the theme is an idea, while in others, the theme is an emotion That is, the poet wants readers

to feel an emotion very strongly Poets can accomplish this through language “The Eagle” is a good example of

a poem with an emotional theme The next poem, writ-ten by Stephen Crane in 1899, combines both action and language to convey theme Read the poem out loud at least twice

A Man Said to the Universe

A man said to the universe:

“Sir, I exist!”

“However,” replied the universe,

“The fact has not created in me

A sense of obligation.”

Look carefully at the language in the poem What kinds of words has the poet chosen? Are they warm, friendly words, or are they cold, distancing words? Do they make you feel comfortable, welcome? Or uncom-fortable, rejected? Are they specific or general? Do you feel like there’s a personal relationship here? Or are things formal, official?

Crane’s word choice helps convey his theme The words “sir,” “fact,” and “obligation” are cold and formal There’s no sense of personal relationship between the man and the universe This is heightened by the general nature of the poem It’s just “a man”—not anyone spe-cific, not anyone you know Not anyone the universe knows, either It’s also written in the third-person point

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