Chapter 8

A Graph, a Map, and You: Getting Ready for the Social Studies Test

IN THIS CHAPTER

check Getting familiar with the Social Studies test’s topics and components

check Surveying the types of questions and passages on the test

check Using strategies to help you achieve the best results

Do you enjoy knowing about how events in the past may help you foretell the future? Do the lives of people in faraway places interest you? Are politics something you care about? If you answered yes to any of these questions, you’re going to like the Social Studies test! After all, social studies helps you discover how humans relate to their environment and to other people.

The GED Social Studies test assesses your skills in understanding and interpreting concepts and principles in civics, history, geography, and economics. Consider this test as a kind of crash course in where you’ve been, where you are, and how you can continue living there. You can apply the types of skills tested on the Social Studies test to your experience in visual, academic, and workplace situations as a citizen, a consumer, or an employee.

This test includes questions drawn from a variety of written and visual passages taken from academic and workplace materials as well as from primary and secondary sources. The passages in this test are like the ones you read or see in most daily newspapers and news magazines. Reading either or both of these news sources regularly can help you become familiar with the style and vocabulary of the passages you find here.

The Social Studies test consists of 50 multiple-choice questions on civics and government (about 50 percent of the test), U.S. history (about 20 percent of the test), economics (about 15 percent of the test), and geography and the world (about 15 percent of the test). You have 70 minutes to complete this section. In this chapter, we take a look at the skills required for the Social Studies section of the GED test, the format of the test, and what you can do to prepare.

Looking at the Skills the Social Studies Test Covers

The question-and-answer items of the Social Studies test evaluate several specific skills, including the ability to read and understand complex text, interpret and relate graphs to text, and relate descriptive text to specific values in graphs. For example, an item could ask about the relationship between a description of unemployment in text and a graph of the unemployment rate over time.

remember You don’t have to study a lot of new content to pass this test. Everything you need to know is presented to you with the questions. In each case, you see some content, either a passage or a visual, a question or direction to tell you what you’re expected to do, and a series of answer options.

The questions do require you to draw on your previous knowledge of events, ideas, terms, and situations that may be related to social studies. From a big-picture perspective, you must demonstrate the ability to

About one-third of the questions test your ability to read and interpret text in a social studies context. That means you’ll be tested on the following:

Another third of the questions ask you to apply mathematical reasoning to social studies. Much of that relates to the ability to

tip A calculator icon appears on the top right of computer screen for some questions on the Mathematical Reasoning, Science, and Social Studies tests. When the icon appears, you may click on the calculator link to help you compute your answers.

The remaining third deals with applying social studies concepts. That includes the following:

Being aware of what skills the Social Studies test covers can help you get a more accurate picture of the types of questions you’ll encounter. The next section focuses more on the specific subject materials you’ll face.

Understanding the Social Studies Test Format

You have 70 minutes to complete the Social Studies test. The multiple-choice questions come in various forms and are of varying difficulty. Most are the standard multiple-choice you know from your school days. Other formats include drop-down menu, drag-and-drop, and hot-spot items. For a general overview of the types of questions on the Social Studies test, check out Chapter 2. For a specific look at the Social Studies types of questions, see Chapter 9.

In the following sections, we explore the subject areas the Social Studies test covers and give you an overview of the types of passages you can expect to see.

Checking out the subject areas on the test

Most of the information you need to answer these questions will be presented in the text or graphics accompanying the questions, so it’s important to read and analyze the materials carefully but quickly. The questions focus on the following subject areas:

  • Civics and government: About 50 percent of the Social Studies test includes topics such as rights and responsibilities in democratic governance and the forms of governance.
  • American history: About 20 percent of the test covers a broad outline of the history of the United States from pre-colonial days to the present, including topics such as the War of Independence, the Civil War, the Great Depression, and the challenges of the 20th century.
  • Economics: Economics involves about 15 percent of the test and covers two broad areas, economic theory and basic principles. That includes topics such as how various economic systems work and the role of economics in conflicts.
  • Geography and the world: In broad terms, the remaining 15 percent covers the relationships between the environment and societal development; the concept of borders, region, and place and diversity; and, finally, human migration and population issues.

The test materials cover these four subject areas through two broad themes:

  • Development of modern liberties and democracy: How did the modern ideas of democracy and human and civil rights develop? What major events have shaped democratic values, and what writings and philosophies are the underpinning to American views and expressions of democracy?
  • Dynamic systems: How have institutions, people, and systems responded to events, geographic realities, national policies, and economics?

If you’re a little worried about all of these subject areas, relax. You’re not expected to have detailed knowledge of all the topics listed. Although it helps if you have a general knowledge of these areas, most of the test is based on your ability to reason, interpret, and work with the information presented in each question. Knowing basic concepts, such as checks and balances or representative democracy, will help, but you don’t need to know a detailed history of the United States.

Identifying the types of passages

The passages in the Social Studies test are taken from two types of sources:

  • Academic material: The type of material you find in a school — textbooks, maps, newspapers, magazines, software, and Internet material. This type of passage also includes extracts from speeches or historical documents.
  • Workplace material: The type of material found on the job — manuals, documents, business plans, advertising and marketing materials, correspondence, and so on.

The material may be from primary sources — that is, the original documents, such as the Declaration of Independence — or secondary sources — material written about an event or person, such as someone’s opinions or interpretation of original documents or historic events, sometimes long after the event takes place or the person dies.

Examining Preparation Strategies That Work

To improve your skills and get better results, we suggest you try the following strategies when preparing for the Social Studies test:

See Chapter 3 for general test-taking strategies that apply to all the GED test sections.