GED and HiSET language arts — reading a full article

Short passages train careful reading, but the reading on both high-school-equivalency exams is longer. ETS describes the HiSET Language Arts – Reading texts as running roughly 400 to 600 words, each followed by several questions, and GED reading passages are also full, multi-paragraph pieces. That changes the task. You have to hold a whole article in mind, see how its paragraphs work together, and find a detail in the middle without rereading everything.

This material gives you three complete articles of about 300 to 380 words, each with numbered paragraphs and four questions, twelve questions in all. Every question prints the full article again, so you can practice reading it once for its shape and then returning to it for each question, which is the habit that saves time on test day.

The first article follows a public library that began lending tools to renters: the problem behind the idea, how borrowing works, what happened in the first years, what has gone wrong, and a board member who changed her mind. The questions ask how the article is organized, what paragraph 2 does, why some tools go out for only three days, and why the writer ends with the early critic.

The second compares two ways to pay off several debts, the avalanche and the snowball, and works through one household's numbers. The questions ask for the writer's purpose, the advantage claimed for the snowball, what the example shows, and the one condition that applies to both methods.

The third is about the Triangle Waist Company fire of March 25, 1911, in which 146 garment workers died in New York City, and the factory-safety laws that followed. The questions ask for the main idea of the paragraph on why so many died, how a transition turns from public outrage to lasting change, which new rule answers one of the causes of death, and why the article ends with Frances Perkins.

The flashcards cover the vocabulary of text structure: problem-solution, cause and effect, compare and contrast, chronological order, main idea, supporting detail, transition, topic sentence, a conclusion that circles back, and an illustrative example.

The written work asks you to name the structure of short articles, write a topic sentence and a summary, explain what a paragraph contributes, and put the steps of a process in order. The oral exam describes an article's paragraphs and asks you what structure they form and what each part does.

Zestly is an independent study tool, not affiliated with GED Testing Service or the HiSET program, and no score is promised.

  • Identify the overall structure of a multi-paragraph article: problem-solution, compare-contrast, cause-effect or chronological
  • Explain the role of a paragraph, an example or a transition within the whole
  • Locate a specific detail in the middle of a longer article
  • Connect an ending to the beginning and explain why a writer closes as they do
  • Summarize an article's main idea across paragraphs

Practice material written by Zestly, based on the HiSET Language Arts – Reading description (informational texts of about 400 to 600 words; process categories on structure, main idea and development, HiSET Test at a Glance) and the GED Reasoning Through Language Arts reading topics. The library and debt articles are original; the Triangle fire article is an original summary of well-documented public history (March 25, 1911; 146 deaths; New York Factory Investigating Commission).

Sample question

Read this article: '(1) When the Eastfield Public Library began lending power drills in 2019, some board members called it a distraction. The library's job, one of them argued at a public meeting, was books. Six years later, the tool collection is one of the busiest parts of the building, and the argument has mostly faded. (2) The idea came from a problem the staff kept hearing about at the front desk. Renters in the city's older apartment buildings wanted to fix small things themselves, such as a sticking door, a loose cabinet or a leaky faucet, but a basic set of tools could cost several hundred dollars, and many renters had nowhere to store one. A librarian named Teresa Okafor began keeping a list of the tools people asked about. By the end of a year the list had more than eighty items on it, and the ladder, the stud finder and the pipe wrench appeared again and again. (3) Borrowing a tool now works much like borrowing a book. A cardholder reserves an item online or at the desk, signs a one-page safety agreement the first time, and picks the tool up from a locked room behind the circulation desk. Most tools go out for one week. Larger items, such as a carpet cleaner or a tile saw, go out for only three days, because the waiting lists for them are the longest. (4) The results have surprised even the program's supporters. In 2024 the collection of about 400 tools was borrowed roughly 5,200 times. Only 11 tools were lost or returned damaged beyond repair, a rate the library's director called lower than for cookbooks. (5) The program has not been free of trouble. Replacement parts are hard to budget for, and two volunteer repair clinics were canceled last year when no one signed up to run them. Some patrons have asked for tools the library will not lend, such as chainsaws, which staff consider too dangerous without training. (6) Still, the board member who once called the idea a distraction now serves on the committee that chooses new tools. "I was wrong about what a library is for," she said. "It is for whatever people cannot easily get on their own."' Which best describes how the writer organizes the article?

See the answer

As a problem and the program created to solve it, followed by how the program works, its results and difficulties, and an ending that returns to an early critic

Paragraph 2 sets out a problem (renters who need tools they cannot afford or store), paragraph 3 explains how the solution works, paragraph 4 gives results, paragraph 5 admits difficulties, and paragraph 6 returns to the board member from paragraph 1. That is a problem-solution article with a circular ending. It covers only the tool program since 2019, not the library's whole history; only one library appears; and nothing suggests replacing books.

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