Writing
for the
Ged test
®
2
Reading Comprehension
Contents
TO THE STUDENT . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . iv
READING INFORMATIONAL TEXTS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
Inferences and Conclusions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
Cumulative Review: GED PRACTICE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .42
The Black Death
READING FICTION . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .45
Excerpt from “Silverspot: The Story of a Crow” . . . . 8
Ernest Thompson Seton
Plot . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .46
Excerpt from Across the Plains in 1844 . . . . . . . . . . .10
Catherine Sager Pringle
Legend of the Buffalo . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .50
Main Ideas and Supporting Details . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .12
Living Together . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .14
An Ongoing Global Issue . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .16
Sequence of Events . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .18
The Science of Sleep . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .20
Lewis and Clark Cross the Bitterroots. . . . . . . . . . . .22
Comparisons and Contrasts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .24
Booker T. Washington and W. E. B. Du Bois . . . . . . .26
Herbert Hoover and Franklin Delano Roosevelt .28
Cause-and-Effect Relationships . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .30
Heat Wave . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .32
Ecology of the Redwood Forest . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .34
Language: Meaning and Tone . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .36
Excerpt from Life on the Mississippi . . . . . . . . . . . . . .38
Mark Twain
Excerpt from “The Story of an Eyewitness”. . . . . . .40
Jack London
Cherokee Myth of the Pleiades . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .48
Character . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .52
Excerpt from “The Mouse” . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .54
Saki
Excerpt from Hard Times . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .56
Charles Dickens
Theme . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .58
Excerpt from “The Oval Portrait” . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .60
Edgar Allan Poe
Excerpt from “The Little Match Girl” . . . . . . . . . . . . .62
Hans Christian Andersen
Figurative Language . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .64
Excerpt from “The Most Dangerous Game” . . . . . .66
Richard Connell
“A Detail” . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .68
Stephen Crane
Cumulative Review: GED PRACTICE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .70
Excerpt from “The Story of an Hour”
Kate Chopin
Answers and Explanations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .74
iii
to the Student
Writing for the GED® Test will help you build the language and writing skills you need for the test. This
workbook covers reading comprehension skills you will use to respond to questions about passages. The
book has two sections:
• Informational Texts
• Fiction
Developing these important skills will help you to answer questions on the Reasoning through
Language Arts Test. These questions may ask you to analyze a passage and then identify the main idea
or put the events in order.
Follow these four steps to complete this book and prepare to write for the GED test.
SteP 1: SKILL oVerVIew
Each lesson begins with a description of the skill and examples. There may also be a chart or graphic
organizer to help you visualize the ideas. Read the examples carefully so you will know what to look for
on the test.
wAtCH oUt!
Some lessons have tips to help you identify or answer questions about a skill or
concept. Look for these tips! Remember to review them when you practice your
extended response writing too.
SteP 2: GUIded PrACtICe
This section gives you a chance to practice the skill in context. You will read a text passage and then
answer some questions. The questions in the Strategies column will guide you to understanding the
content of the passage and using the skill you just reviewed.
Next you can fill out a chart or diagram to help you organize facts or details from the passage. Using
these graphic organizers can help you understand the reading and answer many types of questions. They
can help you put your thoughts in order when answering extended response prompts too.
Practice using the skill to answer questions that look similar to GED test items.
SteP 4: CUMULAtIVe PrACtICe
At the end of each section, you will have a chance to practice answering questions using all the skills
you have learned. Check your answers to see if you are ready for the GED test.
iv © New Readers Press. All rights reserved.
SteP 3: Ged APPLICAtIon
reAdInG InForMAtIonAL textS
or the GED® test, you will be asked to read and answer questions about informational
texts—selections that provide facts and other kinds of information about real people,
places, things, and events. The main purpose of informational texts is to inform or explain.
Textbooks, encyclopedia articles, newspaper reports, journal entries, and instruction manuals are all
types of informational texts. Though you might read informational texts to get facts about a subject or
to find out how to do something, you might also read informational texts just because you find them
interesting. For example, a biography (the story of a person’s life) or a memoir (a person’s recollections
of events) may be written like a story or a novel and be just as entertaining. Unlike those forms of
fiction, however, an informational text is based on fact.
F
In this section, you will learn about the main parts of informational texts and about the most common
text structures, or patterns, used to organize the facts and other details in them. In addition, you will
learn different kinds of thinking skills that will help you answer questions about informational texts.
As you work your way through this section, you will learn how to
•
make inferences and draw conclusions;
•
identify main ideas and supporting details;
•
understand the sequence in which events are organized;
•
look for similarities and differences in comparison-and-contrast texts;
•
analyze cause-and-effect relationships;
•
differentiate between denotative and connotative word meaning.
© New Readers Press. All rights reserved.
For the GED Reasoning Through Language Arts (RLA) Test, you will be asked to read and answer
questions about informational texts on workplace, social studies, and science topics. This section will
help you to read such texts with greater understanding and to answer questions about them with greater
confidence.
Reading infoRmational texts
5
Inferences and Conclusions
SKILL oVerVIew
To answer some questions on the GED test, all you need to do is find the right details in a
passage. The answers are right there, directly stated. Other kinds of questions take more thought.
To answer those, you need to figure out what the details in a passage hint at, or suggest, rather
than directly state. This lesson shows you how to find answers to those kinds of questions.
Stated and Implied Ideas
Some texts, like a bus schedule or a recipe, are straightforward. They say just what they mean, and they
mean no more than that. Other texts are not as straightforward. They directly state some ideas, but they
imply, or suggest, other ideas. Read the paragraph below. It states what the situation is but not exactly
what has happened. Can you figure out what has happened to Antoine?
Today, just as he has for the past two weeks, Antoine waits for the phone call, the
all-important call. He replays the job interview over and over again in his head. The
interview at Flores Marketing went well. Sure, some of the questions were tough,
but the manager definitely liked him. Antoine could tell. Antoine’s wife interrupts
his thoughts. “Honey, this just came for you in the mail.” She hands him an envelope.
The return address is Flores Marketing. His hand shakes as he pulls the letter out
of the envelope, unfolds it, and begins to read. A minute later, he crumples up the
letter, tosses it on the floor, and frowns.
Making Inferences
Clues
Experience
• Flores Marketing has
sent Antoine a letter.
• Job offers are usually
made by phone.
• He crumples it up
and tosses it on the
floor.
• He frowns.
6 Reading infoRmational texts
Æ
• People may crumple
up letters with bad
news.
• People frown when
they are unhappy.
Æ
Inference
Antoine did not get the
job at Flores Marketing.
© New Readers Press. All rights reserved.
The passage above does not come out and say that Antoine did not get the job. However, you probably
made that assumption. To do so, you made an inference, or “educated guess.” Making an inference is
a little like doing detective work. You gather clues, or important details. You see what, if anything, the
clues have in common. Then, you use your life experiences and common sense to figure out what the
clues mean.
drawing Conclusions
Using the same process, you can draw conclusions, or larger inferences, about longer texts. Although
an inference is usually about a sentence or group of sentences, a conclusion is about a whole text or a
large part of it.
The paragraphs below continue the passage about Antoine. Read them to see if you can draw a
conclusion about the author’s purpose, or the reason that the author wrote about Antoine. Important
details have been underlined for you. Use these clues when you draw your conclusion.
Antoine made a common mistake. He thought that the interview went better than
it did. He did not prepare for the interview, so he did not know how to answer some
key questions. For example, he did not give a good answer to the key question
“Why do you want to work for Flores Marketing? What things about us interest you?”
Antoine said, “I need a job, and Flores is near my apartment.”
The manager was trying to find out how much Antoine knew about the company
and why Antoine thought he could do a good job for Flores. Antoine was not
ready to answer those questions. Before the interview, he should have visited the
company’s website, read the company history, and learned what the company does
and who its customers are. That would have helped him explain why he wanted to
work in marketing in general and why he wanted to work in marketing at Flores in
particular.
Why did the author write about Antoine? The author’s purpose is to inform job seekers about things
they should do to get hired. By writing about the mistakes that Antoine made, the author shows
readers what they should not do in order to show readers what they should do.
wAtCH oUt!
Make sure you base your inferences and conclusions on details in a text. Don’t
let your own views about a subject blind you to what a text actually says or
suggests. Always be ready to support your ideas with specific words, phrases, or
sentences in a passage.
A Final Look
Before you move on, read the concept map below. It reviews the process you can use to make inferences
and draw conclusions.
© New Readers Press. All rights reserved.
1. Gather clues.
Look for details—
words, phrases, and
sentences—that might
help you answer the
question that you want
to answer.
Æ
2. Use your
experience.
See what the clues have
in common. Use your
life experiences and
common sense to think
about what the clues
might mean.
Æ
3. Infer or conclude.
Make an inference or
draw a conclusion.
Decide what the clues
mean and why.
Reading infoRmational texts
7
GUIded PrACtICe
PrACtICe Read the following passage from beginning to end. Then, read and
answer the questions in the strategies column.
excerpt from “Silverspot: the Story of a Crow”
StrAteGIeS
by ernest thompson Seton
1
How many of us have ever got to know a wild animal? I do not mean merely to
meet with one once or twice, or to have one in a cage, but to really know it for a
long time while it is wild, and to get an insight into its life and history. The trouble
usually is to know one creature from his fellow. One fox or crow is so much like
1. Which does the author
think? (Check ✓ one.)
another that we cannot be sure that it really is the same next time we meet. But
once in awhile there arises an animal who is stronger or wiser than his fellow, who
¨ All animals are alike.
¨ Some animals are
special.
becomes a great leader, who is, as we would say, a genius . . . and has some mark by
which men can know him. Of this class . . . was Silverspot, whose history, as far as I
Which details tell you so?
Underline them.
could learn it, I shall now briefly tell.
2
Silverspot was simply a wise old crow; his name was given because of the silvery
white spot that was like a nickel, stuck on his right side, between the eye and the
bill, and it was owing to this spot that I was able to know him from the other
crows. . . . Old Silverspot was the leader of a large band of crows. . . . Little by little,
2. Which details in this
paragraph suggest that
crows are intelligent?
Underline them.
[I] opened my eyes to the fact that crows [are] a race of birds with a language and a
social system that is wonderfully human. . . .
3
One windy day I stood on the high bridge across the ravine, as the old crow,
heading his long, straggling troop, came flying down homeward. Half a mile away
I could hear the contented “All’s well, come right along!” . . . as [Silverspot] put
¨ They resent him.
¨ They trust him.
Which details tell you so?
Underline them.
8 it. . . . They were flying very low to be out of the wind, and would have to rise a
little to clear the bridge on which I was. Silverspot saw me standing there, and as
I was closely watching him, he didn’t like it. He checked his flight, called out, “Be
on your guard,” and rose much higher in the air. Then seeing that I was not armed
he flew over my head about twenty feet, and his followers in turn did the same,
dipping again to the old level when past the bridge.
Reading infoRmational texts
© New Readers Press. All rights reserved.
3. How do the other crows
feel about Silverspot?
(Check ✓ one.)
4
Next day I was at the same place, and as the crows came near I raised my walking
stick and pointed it at them. The old fellow at once cried out “Danger,” and rose
fifty feet higher than before. Seeing that it was not a gun, he ventured to fly
over. But on the third day I took with me a gun, and at once he cried out, “Great
danger—a gun.” His lieutenant repeated the cry, and every crow in the troop began
to tower and scatter from the rest, till they were far above gun shot, and so passed
safely over. . . . Another time, . . . a red-tailed hawk alighted on a tree close by their
intended route. The leader cried out, “Hawk, hawk,” and stayed his flight, as did
each crow on nearing him, until all were massed in a solid body. Then, no longer
4. What is Silverspot like?
(Check ✓ one.)
fearing the hawk, they passed on. But a quarter of a mile farther on a man with a
¨ careful and cautious
¨ reckless and daring
at once caused them to scatter widely and tower till far beyond range.
Which details tell you so?
Underline them.
gun appeared below, and the cry, “Great danger—a gun, a gun; scatter for your lives,”
v v v
Ged PrACtICe From the list of words below, choose the three words that best
describe Silverspot as he is portrayed in the passage. Write the words in the small boxes.
Then, use those clues to draw a conclusion. In the middle box, describe the author’s
overall opinion of Silverspot.
• annoying
• smart
• fascinating
• dirty
• noisy
• extraordinary
Æ
2. Clue
1. Clue
Æ
4. The author’s overall
opinion of Silverspot is
Æ
3. Clue
© New Readers Press. All rights reserved.
Answers and explanations start on page 74.
Reading infoRmational texts
9
Ged APPLICAtIon
PrACtICe
Read the passage. Answer the questions that follow.
excerpt from Across the Plains in 1844
by Catherine Sager Pringle
1
We decided to start for Oregon . . . and in April, 1844, we started across the plains.
The first encampments were a great pleasure to us children. We were five girls and
two boys, ranging from the girl baby to be born on the way to the oldest boy, hardly
old enough to be any help. . . .
2
August 1st we nooned in a beautiful grove on the north side of the Platte. We
had by this time got used to climbing in and out of the wagon when in motion.
When performing this feat that afternoon my dress caught on an axle helve and
I was thrown under the wagon wheel, which passed over and badly crushed my
limb before father could stop the team. He picked me up and saw the extent of the
injury when the injured limb hung dangling in the air.
3
In a broken voice he exclaimed: “My dear child, your leg is broken all to pieces!”
The news soon spread along the train and a halt was called. A surgeon was found
and the limb set; then we pushed on the same night to Laramie, where we arrived
soon after dark. This accident confined me to the wagon the remainder of the long
journey.
4
After Laramie we entered the great American desert, which was hard on the teams.
Sickness became common. . . . Some of [the men] often had to rise from their
sick beds to wade streams and get the oxen safely across. One day four buffalo ran
between our wagon and the one behind. Though feeble, father seized his gun and
gave chase to them. This imprudent act prostrated him again, and it soon became
apparent that his days were numbered. He was fully conscious of the fact, but could
precarious circumstances. The evening before his death we crossed Green River and
camped on the bank. Looking where I lay helpless, he said: “Poor child! What will
become of you?” . . . Father was buried the next day on the banks of Green River. . . .
10 Reading infoRmational texts
© New Readers Press. All rights reserved.
not be reconciled to the thought of leaving his large and helpless family in such
5
Mother planned to get to Whitman’s and winter there, but she was rapidly failing
under her sorrows. The nights and mornings were very cold, and she took cold from
the exposure unavoidably. With camp fever and a sore mouth, she fought bravely
against fate for the sake of her children, but she was taken delirious soon after
reaching Fort Bridger, and was bed-fast. Travelling in this condition over a road
clouded with dust, she suffered intensely. . . . Her babe was cared for by the women
of the train. Those kind-hearted women would also come in at night and wash the
dust from the mother’s face and otherwise make her comfortable. We travelled a
rough road the day she died, and she moaned fearfully all the time. At night one of
the women came in as usual, but she made no reply to questions, so she thought her
asleep, and washed her face, then took her hand and discovered the pulse was nearly
gone. She lived but a few moments, and her last words were, “Oh, Henry! If you
only knew how we have suffered.”
6
Her name was cut on a headboard, and that was all that could be done. So in
twenty-six days we became orphans.
v v v
Ged PrACtICe
Circle the letter of the option that correctly answers each question.
1. What can the reader infer about the author?
A.
B.
C.
D.
She disliked camping outdoors.
She made most of the journey on foot.
She was a young child when she crossed the plains.
She was embarrassed that her father was so cautious.
2. What inference can the reader make about the mother?
A.
B.
C.
D.
She died giving birth.
She feared her children would be orphaned.
She dreaded crossing the plains in the winter.
She was angry with her husband for deserting the family.
3. What can the reader conclude about the people who journeyed across the
plains?
© New Readers Press. All rights reserved.
A.
B.
C.
D.
Many of them lost the will to live.
Many of them went without food and water.
They refused to stop the wagon train for any reason.
They grew close as they faced hardships together.
Answers and explanations start on page 74.
Reading infoRmational texts
11