GED and HiSET language arts — two texts, one topic

Some of the hardest reading questions on both high-school-equivalency exams come in pairs. You get two texts on the same subject, often written from different positions, and the questions ask about the relationship between them rather than about either one alone. The HiSET Language Arts – Reading framework names it directly: compare and contrast elements such as structure, style and point of view of two or more texts, and analyze how they present similar information. On the GED, the same skill sits under reading for meaning and identifying arguments, and it is also the first step of the extended-response essay.

This material gives you four pairs and three questions on each, twelve in all. Every question prints both texts in full, so you read each pair three times with a different purpose each time, which is how paired questions are best handled on the exam anyway.

Three pairs are original and set in adult life. A county human resources director reports on a four-day-week pilot, and a resident who found the permit office locked on her one weekday off answers her. A grocery chain's operations director describes what self-checkout did for wait times, and a cashier of fourteen years describes who is left in the one long line. A council member proposes banning gas leaf blowers, and a landscaping business owner sets the cost of switching against a year's profit. The fourth pair is historical and public domain: Booker T. Washington's 1895 Atlanta address and W. E. B. Du Bois's answer to it in The Souls of Black Folk (1903), quoted from the original texts.

The questions ask what one writer says is missing from the other's evidence, which statement both would accept, how their kinds of evidence differ, which of one writer's claims the other concedes, how an average can hide a group whose experience got worse, how their tones differ, where exactly Du Bois agrees with Washington and where he parts from him, how Du Bois builds his reply, and what conclusion is supported when both texts are read together.

The flashcards cover the vocabulary of comparison: central claim, common ground, point of disagreement, concession, tone, purpose, audience, firsthand account, synthesis and bias.

The written work gives you new pairs and asks you to state each claim, find the common ground, compare the evidence and the tone, write one writer's reply to the other, and write a conclusion that uses both. The oral exam hands you short pairs and asks where the writers agree and where they part.

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

  • State each writer's central claim and find the exact point where two writers part company
  • Identify common ground, including what one writer concedes to the other
  • Compare the kinds of evidence two writers use and what each one leaves out
  • Describe differences in tone and structure between two texts
  • Draw a conclusion that is supported by both texts together

Practice material written by Zestly, based on the HiSET Language Arts – Reading process categories D3–D4 (compare two or more texts; analyze how texts present similar topics) and the GED Reasoning Through Language Arts reading topics. Historical excerpts: Booker T. Washington, Atlanta Exposition address (1895), as printed in Up from Slavery (1901); W. E. B. Du Bois, The Souls of Black Folk (1903), chapter III. Both public domain. All other texts are original.

Sample question

Writer 1, the county's human resources director, writes: 'For six months, the county's permit and records offices tried a four-day week: ten-hour days, Monday through Thursday, closed Fridays. Overtime costs fell by 22 percent, and unplanned absences dropped from an average of 31 days a month to 19. In a survey of the 140 employees involved, 88 percent asked to keep the schedule. The offices now open at 7 a.m. and close at 6 p.m., which several contractors told us suits them better. I recommend making the schedule permanent.' Writer 2, a resident, writes: 'I went to renew my business permit on a Friday in March and found the door locked. Like a lot of people in this county, I work Monday to Thursday at a plant forty minutes away; Friday is my one weekday off. The county says the four-day week is a success, and for its employees it may be. But the survey it points to asked only employees. Nobody asked the people standing outside a locked office. Before the schedule is made permanent, the county should count how many residents came in on Fridays before the change, and ask them.' According to Writer 2, what is missing from the evidence Writer 1 relies on?

See the answer

The views of residents who use the offices, since the survey asked only employees

Writer 2's objection is about whose experience was counted: 'the survey it points to asked only employees. Nobody asked the people standing outside a locked office.' Writer 1 does give overtime figures, does report the new 7 a.m. to 6 p.m. hours, and does make a recommendation, so none of those is missing. Writer 2's point is that the evidence covers one group affected by the change and leaves out another.

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