HiSET Reading Study Guide: Informational Texts Part 1
The HiSET The Language Arts – Reading test will assess your ability to understand, interpret, and analyze various texts. This section of our study guide focuses on informational texts, and some the skills you will need to answer these types of questions. This includes your ability to:
- Identify the main idea and the supporting details
- Rephrase and summarize information
- Identify cause and effect
- Compare and contrast information
Identifying the Main Idea and Supporting Details
When you identify the main idea, you identify the most important part of a text. Think of it as the text’s heart. Everything relies on it, no matter the text’s length.
Finding a text’s main idea isn’t as hard as it seems. When scanning a text, ask yourself, “What is the most important thing the author is saying?” If you can answer that question, you’ve discovered the main idea.
All supporting details do what their name suggests — they support the main idea. If you’ve ever written a five-paragraph essay for a class, these are the details you add in the body paragraphs.
Hint
In a nonfiction text, the main idea usually appears somewhere in the first paragraph. The author may spend the entire paragraph detailing the main idea, or it might exist as a one-sentence thesis statement.
Rephrasing and Summarizing Information
When you rephrase something, you put it in your own words. The HiSET Language Arts: Reading test may ask you which answer choice rephrases a paragraph or the entire text’s main idea.
Once you’ve identified the main idea, rephrasing it shouldn’t be too hard. Just compare the answer choices to your first impression of the main idea. A little practice should train you to find the right answer choice.
A summary is similar to a rephrase, but the difference is length. Summaries are much shorter. Ever discussed with a friend what happened in your favorite movie or TV show? If so, you’re already a master at summarizing.
Identifying Cause and Effect
Every effect has a cause, so when you read an informational text, ask yourself the following questions:
- Why did this happen?
- What was the effect?
Hint
In a nonfiction text, there may be one cause with many effects, or many causes with one effect. Identifying them can help you discover relationships among ideas.
Comparing and Contrasting Information
You compare two or more things when you describe how they are similar. You contrast two or more things when you describe how they are different.
This is a relatively easy skill, as it is something you do just about every day. Think of going clothes shopping. You compare pairs of pants that have a similar price because you don’t want to overspend. However, you contrast them by their different colors and put back those that don’t suit your unique tastes.
Informational Texts Part 1 Review Quiz
Black Holes
Black holes have long been a mystery to the scientific community, and while we know more about them than ever, there is still a lot that is unknown. In early April 2019, though, scientists revealed the product of a 2-year long process that offered the world something we previously thought impossible: an image of a black hole.
Why was an image of this phenomenon previously viewed as impossible? A research team led by Katie Bouman, a computer scientist, developed a technique that allowed them to create a composite image of a black hole, giving the world its first real idea of what this phenomenon looks like.
The process, which took 2 years, took advantage of the fact that super-massive black holes form “bright disks of gas and other materials” even if their gravity doesn’t allow light to escape. Bouman and her team used these “bright disks” over a 2-year period to create a composite image of the black hole, and made the impossible possible.
Even though they have become convenient plot devices for films that want their characters to “jump” through space or go back in time, there’s no consensus in the scientific community as to what would happen if we were able to enter into, or send objects through, a black hole. With scientists like Bouman and her team achieving the impossible, though, we may know more about black holes soon.