In alignment with career and college readiness standards, the GED® RLA test focuses on three essential groupings of skills:
- The ability to read closely
- The ability to write clearly
- The ability to edit and understand the use of standard written English in context
The test includes texts from both academic and workplace contexts. These texts reflect a range of complexity levels, in terms of ideas, structure and style. The writing tasks, (called Extended Response (ER) items), require test-takers to analyse given source texts and use evidence drawn from the texts to support their written analysis.
75% of the texts in the exam are from informational texts (including non-fiction drawn from the science and the social studies, as well as a range of texts from workplace contexts) and 25% are literature texts.
Breakdown of the Reasoning Through Language Arts test by time and content:
Test Topics:
Reading for Meaning
Identifying and Creating Arguments
Grammar and Language
Time (to take test):150 minutes
Includes 3 minutes of instructions and final review
Includes 10 minute break between parts 2 and 3
Includes 45 minutes for the written essay Format:
3 sections
1 written essay (extended response)
Multiple choice and other question types (drag and drop, select an area, and drop down)