GED and HiSET language arts — reading and editing

Both exams split this subject into the same two tasks, whatever they call them: reading something and saying what it establishes, and taking a faulty sentence and putting it right. Six questions here do the first, four do the second.

The reading half works the way the real papers do — a short passage printed with the question, and one question about it. A piece about community gardens, where the main idea is the one that covers both halves of what is claimed. A library budget, where the question is what a particular detail establishes rather than what it is. Shop owners, a new parking charge and a fall in trade, where the supported conclusion is the hedged one and the wrong answers reach for motive and for facts that were never given. A word — "clear" — in a sense you would not pick first. A paragraph about a man at a construction site, where his attitude has to be read off the words on the page rather than assumed.

And one that is worth more than the others. A councillor points out that cyclists on a road have risen by forty per cent since a cycle lane opened, and concludes that the lane is making the road safer. There is real evidence there; it simply measures something other than what is being claimed. Separating a claim from the evidence offered for it is examined on both papers, and it is the skill the essay is marked on too.

The four editing questions cover the rules that recur: a comma splice, subject-verb agreement across a long intervening phrase, parallel structure in a list, and choosing the transition the logic requires. Each shows the faulty sentence and asks which described repair is right, rather than offering four versions of the same sentence differing by a comma — a format the checker behind these materials refuses as four copies of one answer. The rule being tested survives the change; what is lost is the scan of near-identical lines, and for that use the free practice tests both organisations publish.

Every passage is about adult life — work, housing, local government, a building site, a council meeting. Nothing here is written down to anyone.

Zestly is an independent study tool. It is not affiliated with GED Testing Service or with PSI Services, and it is not a test centre.

• State the main idea of a short passage, distinguishing it from a detail or a single benefit
• Say what a specific detail in a passage establishes
• Draw the conclusion a passage supports, and reject one that reaches for motive or for facts not given
• Separate a claim from the evidence offered for it, and say when the evidence measures something else
• Work out an ordinary word's meaning from its use rather than from its commonest sense
• Read a character's attitude from what the writer actually put on the page
• Repair a comma splice, a subject-verb disagreement and a broken list, naming the rule in each case

A councillor writes in a local newsletter: 'Since the cycle lane opened on Mill Road last spring, the number of cyclists counted there each morning has risen by forty per cent. The lane is clearly making the road safer.' What is the weakness in this reasoning?