GED Sections
The Tests of General Educational Development (GED Tests) are administered internationally through authorized test centers. The purpose of the GED is to evaluate the skill sets of students acquired through experience. Candidates who have not completed their high school education but have the credential levels equivalent to those with high school diplomas take up the GED.
The GED Tests is made up of 5 sections. They are:
- Language Arts, Writing
- Social Studies
- Science
- Language Arts,
- Reading
- Mathematics.
The first and the last section of the GED, which are Language Arts, Writing and the Mathematics sections respectively, are divided into 2 parts. Except for the Language Arts - Writing Skills, which involves writing an essay and the Mathematics Test that consists of open-ended questions requiring some of the answers be entered on to an Alternative Grid or a Coordinate Plane, all other questions of the GED test sections are multiple-choice questions having with five answer choices. The difficulty of the questions varies from easy to hard casing an array of subjects.
Language Arts - Writing
The Language Arts -Writing Test is comprised of two parts. Part I consists of 50 multiple-choice questions that involve the students to modify and amend workplace, “how to,” and informational documents. There are a total of 50 questions that needs to be completed in 75 minutes. The content areas covered under part one consist 30% of the questions on Sentence Structure. This involves correcting sentence fragments, run-on sentences, comma splices, improper coordination and subordination, misplaced modifiers, and lack of parallel structure. Another 30% of the questions in this part deal with usage, i.e. correcting errors in subject-verb agreement, verb tense, and pronoun reference.
25% of the questions are on Mechanics. This requires the student to correct errors in capitalization, punctuation, spelling (restricted to errors related to possessives, contractions, and homonyms.) The remaining 15% of the questions are on Organization, which involves restructure of paragraphs or ideas within paragraphs, identifying topic sentences, creating unity and coherence in the document.
Part II evaluates the student’s capability to write an essay on a well-known allotted topic. The 200-250 Word Essay requires the student to present his opinion or explain his views about an assigned topic. The essay has to be completed within 45 minutes. The student will have to plan, write, and revise his essay within this time frame. Scratch paper will be provided to student take notes, outline, and form a rough draft; which needs to be developed and copied on to the answer booklet. The booklet is provided with two pages of lined paper for this purpose.
The scores earned on both parts are summed up and reported as a single score.
Science
The Science Test has a total of 50 multiple choice questions that neede to be completed within the provided 80 minutes. This section coveresthe following content areas:
45% Life Sciences
20% Earth and Space
35% Physics and Chemistry
Test questions involves the student to either understand, interpret, or apply information that is presented on the test as a paragraph, chart, table, graph, map or figure, or use the knowledge acquired by the student through his experiences in life and work.
Social Studies
The Social Studies Test contains 50 multiple-choice questions that have to be answered by the student within the provided 70 minutes time limit. The version of the Canadian test differs in content from the US model. This section covers the following content areas.
25% National History
20% Economics
25% Civics and Government
15% World History
15% Geography
Most of the test questions are founded on written and visual texts taken from diverse sources such as academic and workplace texts, as well as main and secondary sources. The materials provided could range from one or more paragraphs, a chart, table, graph, map, photograph, cartoon or figure. The only method of answering the questions in the Social Studies Test is through understanding the question and then applying, analyzing or evaluating the information provided.
Language Arts - Reading
The Language Arts -Reading Test contains 40 multiple-choice questions that need to be completed in 65 minutes. This section helps evaluate the student’s comprehension skills and ability to interpret and apply workplace and academic reading selections. The questions require the student to recognize, relate, investigate and combine information that is given under this section. The content areas covered by this section are as follows.
75% Literacy Test
25% Nonfiction Prose
Literary texts make up of 75% of each test and comprise at least one selection from each of the following areas:
- Poetry
- Drama
- Prose fiction before 1920
- Prose fiction between 1920 and 1960
- Prose fiction after 1960
Nonfiction texts make u for the rest and contain two selections on nonfiction prose from any two of the following areas:
- Nonfiction prose
- Critical review of visual and performing arts
- Workplace and community documents, rules for employees behavior, legal documents and communications (for example, letters and excerpts from manuals).
- The reading passages of the Language Arts - Reading section are about 200 to 400 words in length and the poetry parts about 8 to 25 lines each. A purpose question that is aimed at making the student stick to what is required is displayed at the beginning of each passage or poetry in bold. Students should remember that they are not required to answer the purpose question. Each of the passage or poetry has about four to eight questions.
Mathematics (90 minutes)
The Mathematics Test section aims at evaluating the students grasp of mathematical concepts and their ability to apply them in actual life situations. The concepts that are covered under this section are:
25% Numbers, number sense & operations
25% Measurement and Geometry
25% Data, Statistics and Probability
25% Algebra, Functions and Patterns
The Mathematics Test is divided into two parts, with each part having 25 questions. The only difference between the 2 arts is that the students are allowed to se a calculator while answering the questions on part one. The calculator is provided by the GED testing authority and hence does not require the student to carry one. Calculators are not allowed while dealing with the second section since it deals with estimation and mental math.
Only 80% of the mathematics questions are multiple choices. The rest of the 20% of the questions call for the students’ to make up their own answer. Instead of choosing the answer from the options provided the students are expected to record answers on either standard or coordinate plane grids. Both Part I and II of the Mathematics test are comprised of the multiple-choice, standard grid, and coordinate plan grid questions.