Tips for Using Contemporary's GED Language Arts, Reading in the Classroom

Reading skills form the foundation for success on the GED Test. They are required to understand the information presented on the Social Studies and Science Tests, and they certainly play a role in the ability to edit the paragraphs on the Language Arts, Writing Test and to understand the word problems on the Mathematics Test. On the Language Arts, Reading Test, it is the skill of reading as it is applied to fiction and nonfiction, not the knowledge of great authors and their works, that is the focus of the test.

Contemporary's GED Language Arts, Reading reflects this skill-based orientation. Beginning with instruction in the four cognitive levels that are tested on the Language Arts, Reading Test, the book progresses to an in-depth analysis of the types of reading passages that will appear on the test.

What's in Contemporary's GED Language Arts, Reading?

The book begins with an introduction called "To the Student" that contains general information about the GED Test and instructions on how to use the book. You can use this introduction and the test tips it includes to ease students into your class. If you intend for students to study or even just read sections of lessons independently, you'll want to go over the section "How to Use This Book" with the class.

The Pretest on pages 1–10 is a multiple-choice test with approximately one-half the number of questions on the GED Language Arts, Reading Test. The Pretest can be self-administered and self-checked by the student. However, if at all possible try to discuss each student's answers with the student. Ask why the student answered the way he or she did. Use the Evaluation Chart at the end of the Pretest to create a lesson plan based on each student's needs.

The eight instructional chapters in this book are divided into two parts:

Part I: Critical Thinking Skills in Language Arts, Reading

• Chapter 1: Comprehension
• Chapter 2: Application
• Chapter 3: Analysis
• Chapter 4: Synthesis

Part II: Understanding Language Arts, Reading

• Chapter 5: Nonfiction Prose
• Chapter 6: Prose Fiction
• Chapter 7: Poetry
• Chapter 8: Drama

The chapters in Part I reflect the cognitive skills that are tested on the Language Arts, Reading Test, and the chapters in Part II reflect the classification of passages on the basis of genre. Chapter 5 helps develop techniques for reading nonfiction. Reading passages are taken from recent magazine articles, including commentaries, reviews, editorials, essays, and biographies. This chapter also contains a section on reading business-related documents, such as employee handbooks, training manuals, and memos. Chapters 6, 7, and 8 cover literary texts—prose fiction, poetry, and drama. Reading passages have been chosen from the three time periods covered on the Language Arts, Reading Test—before 1920, from 1920 to 1960, and after 1960.

Each chapter follows the same format—instruction in key skills followed by a variety of practice exercises. The Chapter Review at the end of each chapter can be used for reinforcement as each chapter is completed, as a warm-up for the Posttest, or as a review between the Posttest and the Practice Test. The Evaluation Chart at the end of each test will help you determine which content areas the student needs to review. The Posttest and Practice Test are similar in format and content to the actual Language Arts, Reading Test.

Suggested Teaching/Learning Activities

Following are ideas you can use for developing specific skills:

CRITICAL THINKING

• Have each student begin a journal in a notebook. Students can record their thoughts and feelings about the themes of the literary selections they are reading. You might also want them to write answers to questions in their journals.
• To solidify this important skill, ask students for the main idea of each passage they read in Chapter 5, Nonfiction Prose, if they are not asked for it in the book. Have them state or write the main idea in a complete sentence. You may sometimes want students to summarize the main idea and major supporting details.
• Be sure students read the passages and answer the questions in each practice exercise before they read the answer/explanation. You may want them to write their answers in the margins of the book (if it is their own) or in their journals.
• Remind students to use the purpose question before the passage in each GED Practice exercise to focus their reading. Once students have finished reading a passage and have answered the multiple-choice questions, have them write an answer to the purpose question.
• Ask students to explain their answers to questions. This tactic is especially useful for inference questions. Ask, "How do you know that?" so that a student must identify clues that helped him or her infer, for example, the setting of a story or the motivation behind a character's behavior.
• Whenever a student answers a question orally or in writing, encourage paraphrasing rather than quoting words directly from the text. Ask, "Can you say that in your own words?"
• Integrate reading with writing as much as possible. As students analyze techniques that authors may use—for example, opening with an interesting incident or including a quotation—suggest that students try to use some of these techniques in their own writing. Use the Writing Activities that appear in each chapter for extra writing practice. (See page 113 in Chapter 5, Nonfiction, for an example.)
• Assign the reproducible exercise sheets in Contemporary's GED Instructor Resource Binder to give students practice in the following areas:



• getting the main idea
• inferences

GENERAL READING

• Student readers are especially prone to stopping at each unfamiliar word, so they often lose their train of thought and, therefore, the author's message. Strongly encourage the use of context clues. Make sure students realize that context includes the words after the unfamiliar word as well as before it. Tell a student blocked by such a word to read to the end of the sentence. If the reader still cannot determine the meaning, urge him or her to keep on reading. Tell students they can jot down unknown words in their journals and look them up in a dictionary later—after they have finished reading the entire passage.
• If a student expresses an interest in a particular passage from the book, you can help him or her locate the source of the passage in the Acknowledgments on pages vi–xii and suggest that the student get the book or magazine from the library and read the entire work.

NONFICTION PROSE

• Encourage students to read columnists in newspapers and magazines whose writing could be considered literary and whose work might even appear on the Language Arts, Reading Test. Examples include Dave Barry, P. J. O'Rourke, Anna Quindlen, and William Safire. Clip articles you come across that would be especially appropriate, and ask students to bring in their own. Keep them on file.
• Ask students to bring in commentaries they have read in newspapers, magazines, and TV guides. Working in pairs, students can write their own questions about the commentaries, exchange papers, and then read each other’s articles and answer the questions.
• Have students write their own commentaries on arts and entertainment they have seen, heard, or read: TV shows, movies, books, and so on. Students can exchange papers and analyze each other's writing for such elements as the main idea, supporting details, and tone.
• Ask students to bring in business-related documents they receive in the mail or at work. Or you can ask students to create their own business documents based on their experiences at work, at home, or in the classroom.

PROSE FICTION

• To build reading stamina, as well as a better understanding and appreciation of fiction, you might want to have on hand copies of several short stories that would be likely to appeal to your students. The following are just a few examples.



• "The Story of an Hour" by Kate Chopin
• "The Yellow Wallpaper" by Charlotte Perkins Gilman
• "Young Goodman Brown" by Nathaniel Hawthorne
• "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow" by Washington Irving
• "The Lottery" by Shirley Jackson
• "The Tell-Tale Heart" by Edgar Allen Poe


• Strongly encourage visualizing in students. Constantly ask them to describe the characters, settings, and action in the literary passages they read, even if the author does not explicitly describe them.

POETRY

• Have students read poems aloud so that they can better hear the rhythms of the lines and the sounds of the letters.
• Encourage interested students to write their own poems.
• Song lyrics can be poetry, too. Allow interested students to write down the lyrics of some of their favorite songs and then determine the meaning, mood, figurative language, and so on.

DRAMA

• Play a tape recording of a play as students read along. This activity can help students understand how they can "hear" a character speaking lines when they read.
• Assign roles and have students read drama excerpts aloud.