Interpreting Nonfiction Text

Expect to encounter 4–5 nonfiction texts on the GED RLA test. As the name suggests, nonfiction texts describe real events. A nonfiction text falls into one of two categories:

• Primary source: Written by someone who experienced the events firsthand, such as a soldier writing a war diary or describing his experiences many years later in a letter.
• Secondary source: Written by someone studying past events, such as a historian writing a book about soldiers’ war experiences.

Practice Quiz

Main Ideas

The main idea answers a simple question:

“What’s the text about?”

Finding a nonfiction text’s main idea isn’t particularly hard. You can usually find it stated in:

• The title
• The first paragraph (it’s probably going to be here)
• The final paragraph

To practice, take a moment to review the titles of some famous nonfiction books. Guess what each one’s about:

• The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire
• Into the Wild
• The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks

A title alone can’t tell you everything about a text, but didn’t reading these titles put a few ideas in your mind? These ideas help you make an educated guess about the text’s content, one the first or final paragraph can confirm.

Summary vs. Restatement

I’m sure someone’s asked you, “So, what did you do today?” You might take a minute to talk about what you did. Compressing the day’s events into a few sentences is an example of a summary.

An effective summary conveys the main idea of a longer text. Readers finish a summary with a pretty good idea of what they would encounter reading the entire article or book.

On the other hand, a restatement (i.e. a paraphrase) is the same length as the original text, but the text is written in a different way. Examples include explaining something complex in a way a child could understand.

Drawing Conclusions

Drawing a conclusion about a nonfiction text involves the following steps:

• Identify the main idea.
• Identify supporting ideas and details.
• “Connect the dots” among the main and supporting details to create your own interpretation of the text.

NOTE: A conclusion you draw about a nonfiction text may be very different from someone else’s. That’s fine! No matter which conclusion you draw, you want to be able to back it up with evidence from the text.

Word Choice

Strong nonfiction texts keep their audience in mind. The audience determines whether the language should be formal or informal.

• Formal Texts: Those written to a boss or superior; educational materials; historical documentation
  • Ex: résumés, business emails, cover letters, official documents, reports, textbooks
• Informal Texts: Those written to a family member, a friend, or no audience
  • Ex: personal emails, text messages, some social media, journal and diary entries

Here are a few important differences between formal and informal language.

As you may have noticed from the examples in the table, informal texts tend to be shorter than formal texts.

Point of View and Tone

Two things that nonfiction and fiction texts have in common are point of view and tone. Point of view refers to the author’s background, while tone refers to their attitude toward their subject.

There are a few ways to identify the point of view in a nonfiction text. Ask yourself:

• Does the title or introduction provide any information about who the author is?
  • An author with an M.D. or Ph.D. in their name could be a knowledgeable expert.
• Does the content of the text suggest that they are an expert in what they are writing about?
  • Does the author discuss participating in the events they describe or offer any other clues?

When considering tone, imagine the author reading the text aloud. While reading, ask yourself:

• Does the author’s word choice suggest they have a strong opinion about their subject?

Let’s examine a brief example and see what we can discover about point of view and tone.

Space tourism may be the next big thing, but it is wasteful, unnecessary, and horrible for the environment. As a career astronomer, I want to inspire the next generation to look up at the stars with wonder. Shooting celebrities into orbit sends the wrong message to kids about why space is important.

Point of View: Did you see that the author is a “career astronomer”? That tells us that he is an authority on space.

Tone: Did you catch the “wasteful, unnecessary, and horrible” in the first sentence? Stringing these adjectives together demonstrates his disgust for space tourism.

The texts you read on the GED RLA test will likely be a tad more complex than this example, so make sure to hone your skills with the practice questions later on in this guide, as well as full-length practice tests.

Structure

When you think of structure, the first thing that likely comes to mind is paragraphs. While all writers organize their ideas into paragraphs, there are a few other kinds of structure that require reading between the lines.

• Chronological Order: A writer discusses events in the order in which they happened.
  • Ex: An essay about the final day in the life of President Abraham Lincoln.
• Cause and Effect: A writer discusses what caused something to happen.
  • Ex: A book about the events that caused the Berlin Wall to fall in 1989.
• Compare/Contrast: A writer discusses how two things are similar or different.
  • Compare Ex: A text about why apples and oranges are both sweet.
  • Contrast Ex: A text about why apples don’t have thick skin, while oranges do.
• Description: A writer describes something in great detail.
  • Ex: An essay describing the many physical features of dodos, an extinct bird.

Analyzing Nonfiction Text

Now that you know the basics about how to read a nonfiction text, let’s move on to some advanced skills that will help you analyze information in one text, paired texts, or a text paired with a graphic.

Purpose

Determining a nonfiction text’s purpose requires answering a simple question:

Why did the author write this?

Most nonfiction texts exist to teach you something or change your mind on an issue. Identifying the purpose reveals just as much about the author as the text’s content.

To find purpose, use the same skills we discussed earlier regarding the main idea. Examining an author’s word choice can also reveal much about their text’s purpose.

Effectiveness

Let’s say an author wants to change your mind. Even if you do not agree with their opinion, you can identify an effective argument by:

• Seeing if the evidence they present is relevant to their main idea.
  • If the evidence is irreverent to their main point, the nonfiction text is not effective.
• Seeing if they try to persuade you based on emotion rather than fact.
  • Appealing to your emotions may blind you to faulty reasoning or logic.

Paired Texts

Some GED RLA questions will ask you to analyze two passages at the same time. These passages will share a topic, theme, or idea. Follow these steps to success when approaching paired passages:

• Note what the questions are asking
  • This step primes your brain to find relevant information.
• Read both texts carefully
• Find similarities and differences
  • Typical differences include authors’ points of view and tones regarding the shared topic, theme, or idea.

Once you’ve finished these three steps, dive back into those questions.

Texts with a Graphic

At least one of the nonfiction texts you encounter on the GED RLA test will include a graphic. This graphic may include:

• A chart
• A graph
• A diagram
• An image

The graphic will include some form of new information relevant to the text. When you examine the image after reading the text, ask yourself:

“What does this image add to the conversation?”

“What new thing am I supposed to learn by looking at this?”

Interpreting Nonfiction Text Review Quiz