Liz’s World

Happy New Year everyone! The old year is ending, and the new one’s coming up, with lots of possibilities for the future, right? Like passing the GED test! I guess we’re talking about endings and beginnings for the GED essay, too. I’ve been working on this GED essay practice question, and last time I drafted the middle of a GED essay question. Now it’s time to draft the conclusion… then a whole new step begins. Read the rest of this entry »

I’m still working on that GED essay to prepare for the test. Last time, I showed you how I drafted the first paragraph of a GED practice essay. Doing the first paragraph takes a little extra time, I think, because you want to make a good impression on the GED test readers. The middle is easier for me. So, here’s how I drafted the middle of the GED writing essay: Read the rest of this entry »

Last time, I showed how I drafted a GED essay for the test. Now, I’m going to show you how I went about drafting. Read the rest of this entry »

I thought I’d take a practice question and show you how I try to prewrite about it… so here’s the question!

Sometimes, we don’t know in advance how we’ll react to a new situation.

Describe a time when you were faced with a new or difficult situation and explain your reaction. Do you wish you’d acted differently? Why or why not? Use your personal observations, experience, and knowledge to support your essay.

Read the rest of this entry »

When it comes to writing the GED essay, I know that I was concerned about how much time it would take. I wanted to write it all down at once, and just be done. But in order to do it well and get a good grade, the best thing to do is prewrite, take a few minutes to get ideas in order before writing. Read the rest of this entry »

So, did you figure out a better way to write this?

The most important thing to me now that my children are all grown up is to have good relationships with my children, who are away in several places far from me. Read the rest of this entry »

Sometimes, when I write, I get so involved in trying to pick out a really good word or a really pretty way to say something… well, I either get stuck, or it turns out sounding too formal or just wrong. It’s hard to figure out.

One thing Mr. Williams taught me is that good writing sounds natural. It doesn’t sound formal or forced… so whenever I feel like I’m just getting caught up in a bunch of words, I sit back and ask myself… what do I really mean? What am I trying to say? Then I try to say it like I think it, as simply as possible.

Here’s an example of something I wrote when I got all caught up in the words…

The most important thing to me now that my children are all grown up is to have good relationships with my children, who are away in several places far from me.

It’s just too long, isn’t it? Or something. I have to think about what I really mean, and then rewrite it. How would you rewrite it? I’ll let you know what I did next week.

The thing about the GED test that I think was most scary was writing a timed essay. I like to have a lot of time to think about what I’m writing. So, for GED preparation, it really helps to time your writing.

I started out by using writing exercises, like the ones I’ve been talking about, and writing a little bit every day. Say, take 5 or 10 minutes and write the whole time. That helps you write faster, so you’re not stuck on a blank page, like what happens to me all the time.

Then, the next step is figuring out how to write an organized GED essay in just a little bit of time. Well, I guess it’s not too little. The GED test gives you 45 minutes to write an essay. You only need to write 4-5 paragraphs… so I guess it’s not too bad. But you don’t want to write just anything, so that makes it harder.

For the GED essay test, I tried to make a time plan. So, I thought, 10 minutes to read the question and brainstorm some ideas. 5 minutes to organize them. Then 20 minutes to write the essay. And 10 minutes to read it over and make any changes.

Maybe you need more time to brainstorm, or more time to write. But you’ll only know that by practicing. So, after you’ve been freewriting for a little bit, try a timed writing practice for the GED test. Here’s a GED practice question to get you started, from the people who put the GED test together:

What is one important goal you would like to achieve in the next few years?

In your essay, identify that one goal and explain how you plan to achieve it. Use your personal observations, experience, and knowledge to support your essay.

Give this test question a try, and see how it goes.

Mandy wrote:

im going to go take my GED test again tomorrow, i only have to do the writting part and social studies. When i write any kind of paper, i write as if i was talking to the person face to face. i dont mean to but i guess a cant grasp that i have to make it sound “pro.”

Sounding like a pro can be hard, especially if you spend a lot of time reading stuff on the internet. There’s so many blogs and journal posts out there, and they’re all written pretty informally. Most of the time, when I’m writing something myself, it’s a letter to my kids or a journal entry that’s meant for my friends or something. I don’t think too much about sounding formal. So, just like with math, it’s difficult to do something you’re not practicing all the time.

First of all, why should you sound professional when writing an essay? Is it just ’cause the GED judges are snobs? I don’t think so. It’s more about making sure people can understand you. I mean, that’s what writing and talking is about in the first place, letting people know what you think, right? Sounding professional just means getting your ideas across in the best possible way by using a straight version of English that everyone can understand. Read the rest of this entry »

Lauren posted this:

hi here is my sentence

I am a good cook. I can cook lots of things like lasagna which can be hard to get right and I can make my own pesto sauce or also some desserts too. I learn how to cook from when I was a child. My mother had five children so she cooked a lot and thats where I learned it from. Lots of people tell me I am good at cooking now and that makes me happy. My mom would be proud.

That’s a great paragraph, Lauren. You brought up different kinds of things that you could cook, and talked about your mom, which could end up being two main ideas in an essay. You might think about a third thing if you ever wanted to turn this into an full essay, but it’s a great start!

I noticed you had a few run-on sentences, so I thought I might talk about that a little.

Run-ons are pretty hard to catch. When we talk, we say a lot of “ands” and “buts” without really pausing sometimes. Our brains don’t think like an essay, they just kinda run and run. Just like run-ons.

“I can cook lots of things like lasagna which can be hard to get right and I can make my own pesto sauce or also some desserts too.”

This sentence can be split up. They best thing to do to split it is to find the verbs and the conjunctions (joining words). I’ll mark the verbs in green and the conjunctions in red.

“I can cook lots of things like lasagna which can be hard to get right and I can make my own pesto sauce or also some desserts too.”

A good rule to follow is to have two verbs at the most in each sentence. Since there’s three verbs in this sentence, it can be cut down to two sentences by removing the and. I would also replace the “or” with “and” because “or” means that you can cook pesto sauce or desserts, not both.

“I can cook lots of things like lasagna which can be hard to get right. I can make my own pesto sauce and also some desserts too.” Read the rest of this entry »