What’s on the GED Reasoning Through Language Arts Test
To do well on the GED Reasoning Through Language Arts test you need to have good reading comprehension skills. You must be be familiar with the practical usage of English grammar and punctuation as well as various reading and writing concepts.
The test requires you to read passages of between 450-900 words, from a wide variety of sources and show that you understand what you read and the ability to draw conclusions.
You need to demonstration writing skills in the form of an argumentative essay. In this exercise, you will have to analyse two texts, which each present an opposing point of view on the same issue. Then you need to type an essay stating which text best supports its argument and why. You will have to give evidence to support YOUR argument, from the texts provided.
The GED Reasoning Through Language Arts test is 150 minutes in total and includes a 10-minute break between Parts 2 and 3.
GED Reasoning Through Language Arts Questions
The questions on this test will be structured as follows:
- multiple choice
- fill-in-the-blank
- drop-down
- drag-and-drop questions
- extended response (essay)
Part 1 – Reading
The Reading section focuses on comprehension skills using a variety of text-types:
- 75% are informational, non-fictional texts from the work-place, community-based documents and non-fiction related to social studies and science topics.
- 25% are literary texts from works of fiction
There is no poetry. You will have to read, analyse and apply the information from the texts.
Part 2 – Writing
This the extended response or essay question. In 45 minutes you will have to type a well-constructed argumentative essay. To score well you must know how to construct a good essay. You will need to build your arguments and support each idea with evidence from the given texts.
Your essay will be graded according to
- your ability to assess the arguments presented and use the evidence in the texts provided
- the structure and logical development of your ideas and arguments
- the clarity of your expression in standard English
Do not use informal language and abbreviations such as those commonly used in text messages.
The essay will be evaluated and scored by a proctor and so the score for your GED Reasoning Through Language Arts test might only be uploaded to your account profile in up to 48 hours after your test.
Acing the Argumentative Essay
Part 3 – Language
This part of the test focuses on language usage skills. It tests your ability to edit texts to ensure correct sentence structure, concord agreement, capitalization, punctuation, use of homonyms, appropriate vocabulary and correct formal language usage of standard English in context.
You don’t need to memorise definitions of grammatical concepts or memorise any information.
On the test you might be asked to do any of the following:
- Analyze the structure of a text and how ideas, characters, and events develop in the text.
- Recognize the author’s point of view and any prejudice
- Evaluate arguments and claims in the text
- Compare and contrast texts on similar topics
- Correct use of conjunctions and transitional words and phrases
- Eliminate run-on sentences, fused sentences, and sentence fragments.
- Avoid dangling or misplaced modifiers or ensure logical word order.
- Ensure parallelism and correct subordination and coordination.
- Correct agreement between subjects and verbs in a sentence.
- Eliminate errors in subject-verb or pronoun-antecedent agreement
- Demonstrate correct use of capitalization, punctuation, apostrophes etc
- Correct errors involving frequently confused words
- Eliminate non-standard or informal use of English
To prepare for the GED Reasoning Through Language Arts test you should read as much high-quality literature as you can. Read from a variety of different sources, such as classic fiction, biographies, current events media articles and any other resources that will develop and improve your critical thinking and analytical skills.
The Online GED Prep™ study programme will ensure that you get sufficient practice and provide you with samples of the kinds of textual information that you will need to read and analyse on the test.