GED and HiSET language arts — reading America's founding texts

Part of the reading on the GED Reasoning Through Language Arts test comes from what GED Testing Service calls the Great American Conversation: founding documents and other texts that shaped public argument in the United States. HiSET Language Arts – Reading draws on a broad range of informational texts in the same way. The questions are reading questions, not history questions. They ask what a sentence does in an argument, what a word means where it stands, why a writer repeats a phrase, and how a speaker positions an audience. Eighteenth- and nineteenth-century prose makes all of that harder: sentences are long, the main clause often arrives at the end, and familiar words carry older meanings.

This material practices that kind of reading on the texts themselves, quoted exactly. From the Declaration of Independence: the opening sentence, whose main clause explains why the causes must be declared; the 'prudence' sentence, which answers the objection that revolution is rash; the phrase 'a candid world'; and the list of grievances, where 'He has' opens sentence after sentence. From the Constitution: the Preamble, where 'We the People' is the subject of 'do ordain and establish', and the Fourth and Ninth Amendments read clause by clause. From the Federalist Papers: Madison's air-and-fire analogy in No. 10 and 'If men were angels' and 'Ambition must be made to counteract ambition' in No. 51. And two speeches: Lincoln at Gettysburg, and Frederick Douglass in 1852 telling his audience, 'This Fourth of July is yours, not mine.'

The twelve quiz questions each print the words they ask about. The flashcards give the key words of these documents in the sense they carry there: unalienable, usurpation, sufferance, candid, ordain, posterity, probable cause, enumeration, disparage, faction, aliment, consecrate.

The written work asks for what a multiple-choice question cannot check: a paraphrase of 'the consent of the governed', an explanation of Madison's two tasks of government, how Lincoln turns from the dead to the living, why Douglass asks a question and answers it himself, three words explained in context, a warrant tested against the Fourth Amendment, and how Douglass turns the Declaration's own ideals on his audience. The oral exam gives you one short quotation at a time and asks you to restate it and explain what it does.

Nothing here is a history course, and nothing promises a score. Zestly is an independent study tool, not affiliated with GED Testing Service or the HiSET program.

• Find the main clause of a long eighteenth-century sentence and restate it plainly
• Explain what a sentence does in an argument, such as answering an objection or stating a purpose
• Determine the meaning of words like candid, ordain, enumeration and disparage in context
• Explain the effect of repetition and analogy in the Declaration, Federalist No. 10 and the Gettysburg Address
• Explain how Frederick Douglass uses contrast to position his audience

Practice material written by Zestly for the reading of historically significant US texts on the GED Reasoning Through Language Arts test and HiSET Language Arts – Reading. Texts quoted: Declaration of Independence (1776); Preamble and Fourth and Ninth Amendments of the US Constitution; Federalist Nos. 10 and 51 (1787–1788); Lincoln's Gettysburg Address (1863); Frederick Douglass, Fourth of July oration (1852), as printed in My Bondage and My Freedom (1855). All public domain; original spellings such as 'defence' kept inside quotations.