The General Education Development Test (GED) is designed to assess students who did not obtain a high school diploma. Oftentimes, individuals take the GED in order to pursue a higher education or get hired on a job. There exam is broken up into five different subjects.
Language Arts
The language arts portion of the GED lasts for two hours. In part one of the writing section, you are tested on sentence structure, usage, mechanics and organization of an idea. Students answer questions about written passages and are asked to correct incorrect sentences. Other questions address punctuation and where sentences should be placed in a paragraph. The second portion instructs students to write a five paragraph essay on a pre-determined topic set by the test creators.
Social Studies
The social studies part of the exam focuses on five different areas. Students must know American history and world history, along with civics and government, economics and general geography. It lasts for 70 minutes and has 50 questions. Students must read short passages and answer questions or read graphs, political cartoons or charts.
Science
The science portion of the exam lasts for 80 minutes and covers 50 questions. The majority of questions cover life science, while another portion covers earth and space science; physical science is the last part. Questions focus on topics including cell division, magnetism, geology, climate and photosynthesis. Students are given text and graphics along with the questions to interpret.
Reading
The language arts reading section takes 65 minutes and is composed of 40 questions. Passages are included in the exam and students answer questions after analyzing the subjects, characters and overall theme of the passage. Passages come from poems, novels and famous plays.
Mathematics
The mathematics test is 50 questions and takes 90 minutes to complete. The first half of the exam allows students to use a calculator. The areas covered include numbers and operations, measurement and data analysis, algebra and geometry. Grids and coordinate planes are also used. Common questions cover exponents, angles, Pythagorean theorem, decimals, fractions and volume.
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