Q: What’s the capital of Malawi?
A. Paris
B. Dukhan
C. London
D. Lilongwe
In this chapter, we’ll show you how to boost your score with key skills designed to maximize your performance.
Taking a standardized test involves more than knowledge. You need to approach the test with strategy and learned skills. Effective test takers adopt certain habits that help to reduce stress and increase points.
Depending on your specific skill set and your level of comfort with the range of difficulty on the test, some questions will be easier for you than others. It’s important to remember that within each section, all of the questions (besides Extended Response) are worth approximately an equal number of points, which means that getting a difficult question wrong is not going to cost you more than missing an easy question. You also have the freedom to answer the questions in any order you like. So, to maximize your score, first answer all of the questions with which you are comfortable, and come back to the more challenging problems later. If you are running out of time, it is best to have already completed all of the “easy” problems so you can spend your remaining minutes guessing on the difficult ones.
It may feel more natural to do the problems in the order they are presented. However, you want to be able to see all of the questions in a section and know that you have worked through all of the questions you could in the time allotted. With efficient use of the flag button and review screen, discussed below, skipping questions that you consider more difficult is the best use of your time. Remember: Skip early and skip often.
As we discussed in Chapter 2, you will not be provided with traditional scratch paper but with three erasable note boards and a dry-erase marker. Although you will not be able to save your work and go back to it later, that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t think about how to use your note boards strategically.
Keeping your hand moving while you focus on the physical task of writing is an essential way to stay focused on the test itself. If your brain has to communicate with your hand, then it is engaged and active and less likely to be distracted, which can force you to reread a question multiple times.
In addition to keeping your brain focused and on task, writing can help you to stay on target with the techniques presented in this book. Having something to write down, such as a summary of a reading passage or a math formula, may be just the push your brain needs to get it moving in the right direction. Using scratch paper, develop a note-board habit for each type of question, and stick to it!
It is inevitable that at some point during the test, you will encounter a question that you don’t understand, or one that you think you understand…but the answer you want isn’t an option. Often, the problem is that you have misread the question or made a small calculation error. Research shows that once you have misread a question, you are likely to keep reading it in the same way, no matter how many times you try. Meanwhile the clock is ticking, and you aren’t getting any closer to an answer. If you get stuck, the best thing to do is to flag the problem for review, and move on. Distracting your brain by doing other problems is often just what you need in order to come back and read the problem with fresh eyes.
At the end of the section, you will be able to use the review screen to quickly jump to any questions you have marked. Once you go back to them, you will have a better understanding of how much time you have left to deal with your marked questions. Then you can decide whether to sit down and work the problem or to simply put in a guess.
Many wrong answers are the result of simply going too fast and reading too quickly. However, most test takers feel they have to rush through the “easy” problems because they won’t have time on the more difficult ones. Try a few questions untimed, and you will make fewer mistakes. You’ll also probably work more quickly than you think. The questions don’t get harder when you add a timer, but somehow, test takers tend not to score as highly.
The trick is to take the GED® test at an even pace, recognizing when a question is more difficult and should be marked for later. Work for accuracy, because doing all the problems will not get you a higher score unless you do them correctly. Slow down and make sure that you are (a) choosing to do the questions you understand first and (b) giving them enough time, attention, and focus to answer them correctly. If you run into a question that feels like a brick wall, flag it and move on to an easier question.
The only exception to this rule is in the last few minutes of any section. This is the time to use your review screen and marked questions to ensure that you have guessed on all the questions for which that option was available.
The GED® test does not penalize you for an incorrect answer; there is never any deduction for getting a question wrong. So regardless of whether you know the answer to any given problem, it is to your advantage to record an answer to every problem. Thus, guessing on problems that you don’t know how to solve, or that you don’t have time to work through, can actually add points to your score.
Q: What’s the capital of Malawi?
A. Paris
B. Dukhan
C. London
D. Lilongwe
If you had a one-in-four chance to win $10 (and entering didn’t cost you anything), you would enter, right? The multiple-choice and drop-down questions on the GED® test are very much like that $10 chance. On any single multiple-choice question, your chance of correctly guessing is 25 percent, and on drop-down questions that chance can increase depending on the number of answer choices available. If you randomly guess a different answer for each question, those odds probably won’t add up to as many points as you had hoped. However, if you choose the same answer for every multiple-choice question on which you randomly guess, you are likely to get one in four of the answers correct. Those are pretty good odds, and simply choosing a consistent “guess letter” for drop-down and multiple-choice questions can improve your score.
But what if you could increase your odds even more?
Try the following question:
1. In what year did Texas become a state?
You don’t know? The good news is that the GED® test would never ask such a question. Or rather, if it did, you would be given a reading passage in which the answer could be found. The purpose of this example question is to show what you can do if you have a few extra seconds to add to your guessing.
If this were a fill-in-the-blank question, and you did not have time to read the passage, you would have to guess, but the likelihood of your getting it correct would be very small. However, using a small amount of information to guess could help you if the question was multiple choice or drop down. Now, consider the same question in multiple-choice format.
1. In what year did Texas become a state?
A. 100 B.C.
B. 25 A.D.
C. 1836
D. 1990
Now the question looks a little easier, right? You know Texas became a state sometime between the 1700s and today. That eliminates (A) and (B). You are also pretty sure that it happened well before 1990, so eliminate (D) too. You didn’t know the exact answer, but you did know enough to eliminate wrong answers.
You probably won’t be able to narrow down the answer choices to a single one on very many questions, but you may be able to eliminate two answers, which leaves you with a fifty-fifty chance of getting the correct answer. Remember, every choice you eliminate increases your chances of guessing the correct answer.
Try one more.
2. There are 10 students in a class, and their average score on a test is 79 out of 100. If a new student is added to the class, what is the minimum score he would need to achieve in order to bring the class average up to 80 out of 100?
A. 1
B. 79
C. 85
D. 90
This problem may seem fairly complex to figure out. Don’t worry if you don’t know how to do averages; we will teach you all you need to know in the Mathematical Reasoning chapters. However, you can understand that if a student’s score has to bring up the class average, it would have to be higher than the class average to begin with. With this information you could eliminate (A) and (B), and you would have a fifty-fifty chance of guessing the correct number, which is (D).
No one question is that important to your score. If you read a question and aren’t immediately sure how to answer it, flag it and move on. Do not spend any time beating yourself up for not knowing how to do the problem, as everyone is likely to find at least some questions they don’t know how to do. If a problem is taking too much time to figure out, fill in a guess and move on. Keeping track of how many questions you think you got correct, or getting upset because you think you aren’t doing well, can only impact your score negatively. Know that you have made the right decision for your overall score at every stage, and move forward to deal with the next question with confidence.
Sometimes the questions on this test may seem complex and unusual, especially if you have been away from school for a long period of time. It is important to recognize the strengths that you bring to this test; they can help you to achieve the score you are looking for. Implement the six habits to take control of your testing experience. To this foundation, add the preparation and practice from the rest of this book.
By focusing on your strengths, you can maintain the proper perspective. The GED® test is only that—a test. It doesn’t measure your worth as a human being. It measures how effectively you have acquired a few skills and how you make use of that knowledge in a timed, stressful situation. Use the test’s own limitations to your advantage, and with a little hard work, you can earn your GED® test credential.