¡GED Ahora! | Maria’s GED Blog Site

Hola, everyone! Hope the GED studying is going well. Here’s a comment from Sunflower on one of my blog posts, and I wanted to write some about it:

when I see a paragraph like this I get scared I feel like its to many words on the page can anyone give me suggestion on reading passage like these and understand what I’m reading I get lost after a few minutes of reading …

I know a lot of people feel this way! I guess the problem is that it’s just overwhelming! I mean, it kinda makes you just not want to even try to read it. Well. I really felt that way a lot when I was first learning English. You look at all the writing, and you don’t know all the words, and you don’t even know where to start or how to figure it out.

But it’s sorta like studying for the GED, you know. You can’t let it get to you, but just take it a little at a time. Here’s a strategy that helps me a lot:

1) When you first look at something you need to read, just look at the headline, the first sentence, the last sentence, and any pictures, diagrams, subheads, or labels you see. Try to get an overview of what it’s about from the clues in the title or in parts of the reading. If there’s just text, read the first sentence of each paragraph, and the last sentence, just to get an idea and start asking questions about it. What do you get from doing this? You get an idea of what the text is about, a background to read it. In your brain, you’re making connections between things you already know and the text you’ll need to read. Try to make as many connections as you can, by thinking of things you know about the topic and asking yourself questions about what you’re going to read!

2) If you’re reading a GED passage, read the questions first. Find out what it is they’re going to ask you about. Now, what are you get by reading the question? You get a goal! You get a real idea of why you actually want to read this. That means, your reading is directed. It gives you a way to make sense of what you’re getting out of reading.

3) Now, start reading, with the question in mind. You’re not just reading, you’re looking for the answer. That will help you understand what you’re reading. Think about it while you’re reading, and it’ll help.

4) What happens when you get to a word you don’t know? Try to understand the word by what the word sounds like or is similar to, and by the context of the word–what’s around it, what the sentence is saying. Don’t worry if you can’t understand every word. You can still get an idea of what the whole text is talking about.

5) Go back to the question after you finished reading. Does the question make more sense now? Do you know what the answer is? You might not be able to answer all the questions, but you’ll be able to improve a lot by taking reading one step at a time, giving it context, and thinking while you’re reading.

Good luck with your GED!

For more information about the GED test and GED test preparation, visit The GED Academy at http://www.passGED.com.

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