THE NAME AND TELEPHONE NUMBER OF YOUR INSUR-ANCE PROVIDER■ PROOF OF...

3. the name and telephone number of your insur-ance provider

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proof of residency

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a photo identification

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a copy of your birth certificatePlease provide this information to us as soon as pos-

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proof of insurancesible. You may call me at 800-123-4567, extension 22,or fax me at 222-123-4567. Please include applicationWhether the text is a business document or a personalcode XT121on your correspondence.essay, remember that writers always write for a reason.Think about the writer’s purpose. Why is he or she writ-Thank you for your prompt attention to this matter.ing? Look for clues in both content (including specificI look forward to completing your loan application.facts and details) and style (including word choice andtone). Check for topic sentences and thesis statementsSincerely,that express the author’s main idea.Victor WilsonJunior Loan AnalystCrown Bank

Tips and

38

Strategies for the

Language Arts,

Reading Exam

YOU HAVE reviewed a lot of material to prepare for the GED Lan-guage Arts, Reading Test. Now here are some specific tips and strate-gies for handling the questions you will see on the exam.

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n t h i s ch a p te r, you will review the structure of the reading exam and specific tips you can use toimprove your score on the test. Read this chapter carefully, and then review your notes from the whole Lan-guage Arts, Reading section. When you are ready, move on to the practice questions that follow.

T h e G E D L a n g u a g e A r t s , R e a d i n g Te s t i n a N u t s h e l l

This GED exam consists of 40 multiple-choice questions about texts from three different time periods: pre-1920,1920–1960, and 1960–present. Each exam will include a poem, an excerpt from a play, a commentary on the arts,a business-related document such as a memo or report, and at least one excerpt from a work of fiction. Each pas-sage (except the poem) will be approximately 200–400 words long.Questions will test your basic comprehension of the texts (20%), your ability to analyze the texts (30–35%),your ability to “synthesize” (draw inferences from) ideas from the texts (30–35%), and your ability to apply infor-mation or ideas from the texts to different contexts (15%). You may be asked about the main idea or theme of atext, a character’s feelings or motivations, or the significance of a symbol. You may be asked to identify a specificfact or detail or to predict the effect of an action described or implied in the text. You might be asked about theeffect of a rhetorical technique or to identify the tone of a passage.

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T I P S A N D S T R AT E G I E S F O R T H E G E D L A N G U A G E A R T S , R E A D I N G E X A M

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G e t t i n g R e a d y f o r t h e E x a m

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This story (poem, play, essay, etc.) is about______ (insert topic).

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The writer seems to be saying ______ (generalThe Language Arts, Reading GED covers a lot of ground.thematic statement) about this topic.It tests your comprehension not just of functional textsIf you can support your statement with specificbut also of the many genres and time periods of litera-evidence from the text, and if that statement isture. Between now and test time, one of the best thingsgeneral enough to encompass the whole passage,you can do is to read as much as possible, especially inyou have probably successfully identified thethe genres with which you are least familiar. The moremain idea or one of the themes of the text. (Lit-comfortable you are with literature, the easier it will beerary texts, especially long ones such as novels,to understand what you read, and the more comfortablecan have more than one theme.)you will be at test time.