About GED Essays
The GED test is a General Educational Development test. A person takes a GED test in order to obtain the equivalency of a high school diploma. Many employers require that a job applicant have a high school diploma or GED. In order to pass the test, a person must pass the writing part of the test. Part of that test is writing an essay.
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Significance
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In order to pass a GED test, a student must pass the written portion of the test. The written portion of the test includes an essay question. The student must answer the question by writing an essay that covers the answer in a coherent, organized manner. Spelling and grammar count. Test graders place greater emphasis, however, on essay organization, focus, and development of ideas. That is why it's important for the essay writer to take the time to write an outline for the essay before actually writing it. The outline will allow the student to think about how to keep thoughts about the subject matter focused and organized.
Function
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The GED test is meant to measure a person's knowledge that may have been acquired beyond the walls of a high school. In this way, although a student may not have earned a high school diploma, the student may have acquired the same knowledge or more. The GED test functions as a way of measuring this knowledge. The GED essay measures the knowledge of a student to write a cogent answer to a question at a level equal to that of a high school graduate. Because the essay graders value organization and focus of an essay, this portion of the GED test functions as measure of a student's ability to keep thoughts organized and focused.
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Time Frame
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The GED essay question usually has a time limit of fifty minutes. Given that limited amount of time, it's usually best for the student to take a few minutes to organize the answer before actually writing. If a student begins writing before planning the structure of the answer, the writing can go off on a tangent, and before the student realizes it, the essay is not answering the question at all and the fifty minutes are up. A good way to organize the answer is by creating an outline. The outline should list the points that the student wants to make. The essay will then make these points in an orderly fashion, creating an essay that is more focused than it would be without an outline.
Features
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The GED essay question is usually a basic question that requires a measured, thoughtful response. In other words, the answer can't be a one-word answer such as yes or no. In this way, the question is meant to provoke the student into thinking about how someone might respond to the answer. The student should anticipate responses to the essay and respond in advance. One good method is to brainstorm about the subject matter of the question. List anything known about the subject matter. Then think about the relevance of that knowledge. When the student begins listing everything known about the subject matter, the relationship between different aspects of that knowledge will become apparent. This, followed with an outline, will help the student write a good essay.
Considerations
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The essay itself should be long enough to develop an answer that is deeper than might be heard in a street conversation. In other words, an idea that the student has should be developed over two or three complete sentences. Another consideration is the flow of the essay. Each sentence and paragraph should build on and refer to what has preceded it. A student should write a theme sentence about the essay before actually writing it. That way, the student can write the essay and always be checking if each point the essay makes pertains to the theme sentence. When it does, then the essay will be considered focused and receive a good grade.
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