In the world of education, it has been said that “the strongest predictor of career and college readiness is the ability to read and comprehend.” The GED agrees.
A passage is several paragraphs of reading material. The GED’s Reasoning Through Language Arts, Social Studies, and Science tests place a lot of emphasis on comprehension of reading passages. Your ability to understand what you have been given to read is more important for answering questions than tapping into an encyclopedic memory.
Within the Reasoning Through Language Arts test, the GED has planted a writing test, known as an extended response, which is also a reading test. You will be asked to write an essay about the best-supported position—the most persuasive side of an argument—presented in two reading passages with opposing points of view. Thus, before you can begin to write the essay, comprehension of a pair of reading passages (known as a prompt) is essential.
Even the GED’s Mathematical Reasoning test doubles as a reading test, because you must read and comprehend word problems before you can begin to crunch numbers.
The GED is primarily a reading test. Reading runs through it. The better you read, the better you will do.
(Several sources—Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction, Plymouth-Canton Community Schools, and Durham Tech, among others—indicate that the GED is geared toward a ninth-grade reading level.)