GED Language Arts Study Guide: Interpreting Nonfiction

Expect to encounter 4–5 nonfiction texts on the GED RLA test. These passages need to be evaluated carefully and treated differently than works of fiction. Our study guide will cover the most important nonfiction reading skills you’ll need for exam day.

Practice Quiz

Reading Nonfiction Text

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.

Let’s break down works of nonfiction into some of their most important features.

Main Ideas

The main idea answers a simple question:

“What is the text about?”

Finding the main idea of a nonfiction text isn’t particularly hard. You can usually find it stated in one of the following places:

• 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. Try to guess what each one is 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

Someone has probably asked you, “So, what did you do today?” It likely took only a few moments for you to say 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 idea 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 the conclusion you draw, you just need to be able to back it up with evidence from the text.

Word Choice

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

• Formal Texts: Those written to a boss or superior; educational materials; historical documentation
  • Example: résumés, business emails, cover letters, official documents, reports, textbooks
• Informal Texts: Those written to a family member, a friend, or no audience
  • Example: 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 if we can identify the tone and point of view.

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 description “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 with full-length practice tests.

Structure

When you think of structure, paragraphs likely come to mind first. 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.
  • Example: An essay about the final day in the life of President Abraham Lincoln.
• Cause and Effect: A writer discusses what caused something to happen.
  • Example: 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.
  • Example of comparison: A text about why apples and oranges are both sweet.
  • Example of contrasting: A text about why apples don’t have thick skin but oranges do.
• Description: A writer describes something in great detail.
  • Ex: An essay describing the physical features of dodos, the extinct species of 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 about an issue. Identifying purpose reveals just as much about the author as the text’s content does.

To find purpose, use the same skills we discussed earlier regarding the main idea.

Note
Examining word choice can also reveal much about an author’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 irrelevant to their main point, the 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 for 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 be:

• 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?”

Now is your chance to use this knowledge and apply your nonfiction interpretation skills. Take our interpreting nonfiction review quiz below before moving on to the next section of our GED study guide: interpreting fiction.

Interpreting Nonfiction Text Review Quiz