The main idea is what the article is about. On GED test, the article will usually have several paragraphs each supporting the main idea in different ways. There will always be a question about the main idea.
Which of the following most accurately states the main idea of the passage?
What would be a good title for the passage
The primary purpose of the passage is to...
The passage is primarily concerned with which of the following?
The main point made by the passage is that
Another title for this piece would be
What does the author trying to convey in this article?
Listen to the video and read the lyrics. You may want to do this a couple of times. Try answering the questions below, just to get you thinking critically about the songs you hear.
Questions:
1. A "vision softly creeping" is what?
2. How do you know he still remembers his dream?
3. In his dream, was he walking in a city or in the country?
4. Was it warm or cold?
5. Who are the people, really?
6. Why didn't anyone disturb the sound of silence?
7. Did people listen to him?
8. Why does he stress that the neon god was made by the people.
9. What kind of god is the neon god? False or True
10. Are the words on the subway walls and tenement halls true?
11. Does it take more courage to write songs or to write graffiti, according to the author?
12. What are the sounds of silence?
Click on the video below to watch a lesson on modifiers. These are important to understand for passing the GED and improving your reading and writing skills. Beneath the video is a Wikipedia article on modifiers. After watching the video, you may get more out of the article.
From Wikipedia
In grammar, a modifier is an optional element in phrase structure or clause structure.[1] A modifier is so called because it is said to modify (change the meaning of) another element in the structure, on which it is dependent. Typically the modifier can be removed without affecting the grammar of the sentence. For example, in the English sentence This is a red ball, the adjectivered is a modifier, modifying the nounball. Removal of the modifier would leave This is a ball, which is grammatically correct and equivalent in structure to the original sentence.
Other terms used with a similar meaning are qualifier (the word qualify may be used in the same way as modify in this context), attribute, and adjunct. These concepts are often distinguished from complements and arguments, which may also be considered dependent on another element, but are considered an indispensable part of the structure. For example, in His face became red, the word red might be called a complement or argument of became, rather than a modifier or adjunct, since it cannot be omitted from the sentence.
Modifiers may come either before or after the modified element (the head), depending on the type of modifier and the rules of syntax for the language in question. A modifier placed before the head is called apremodifier; one placed after the head is called a postmodifier.
The two principal types of modifiers are adjectives (and adjectival phrases and adjectival clauses), which modify nouns; and adverbs (and adverbial phrases and adverbial clauses), which modify other parts of speech, particularly verbs, adjectives and other adverbs, as well as whole phrases or clauses. (Not all adjectives and adverbs are necessarily modifiers, however; an adjective will normally be considered a modifier when usedattributively, but not when used predicatively – compare the examples with the adjective red at the start of this article.)
Another type of modifier in some languages, including English, is the noun adjunct, which is a noun modifying another noun (or occasionally another part of speech). An example is land in the phrase land mines given above.
Examples of the above types of modifiers, in English, are given below.
It was [a nice house]. (adjective modifying a noun, in a noun phrase)
[The swiftly flowing waters] carried it away. (adjectival phrase, in this case a participial phrase, modifying a noun in a noun phrase)
She's [the woman with the hat]. (adjectival phrase, in this case a prepositional phrase, modifying a noun in a noun phrase)
I saw [the man whom we met yesterday]. (adjectival clause, in this case a relative clause, modifying a noun in a noun phrase)
His desk was in [the faculty office]. (noun adjunct modifying a noun in a noun phrase)
[Put it gently in the drawer]. (adverb in verb phrase)
He was [very gentle]. (adverb in adjective phrase)
She set it down [very gently]. (adverb in adverb phrase)
[Even more] people were there. (adverb modifying a determiner)
It ran [right up the tree]. (adverb modifying a prepositional phrase)
[Only the dog] was saved. (adverb modifying a noun phrase)
In some cases, noun phrases or quantifiers can act as modifiers:
[A few more] workers are needed. (quantifier modifying a determiner)
She's [two inches taller than her sister]. (noun phrase modifying an adjective)
An independent clause (or main clause) is a clause that can stand by itself as a simple sentence. An independent clause contains a subject and a predicate; it makes sense by itself and therefore expresses a complete thought.
Independent clauses can be joined by using a semicolon or by using a comma followed by a coordinating conjunction (for, and, nor, but, or, yet, so, however, etc...).
I am a doctor, and my wife is a lawyer. (This is a compound sentence made up of two independent clauses: I am a doctor and my wife is a lawyer.)
I want to be a nurse, but I need to receive my science degree. (compound sentence made up of two independent clauses: I want to be a nurse and I need to receive my science degree)
John walked to the park with his friend, Jim. (This is another simple sentence.)
Its vanished trees, the trees that had made way for Gatsby’s house, had once pandered in whispers to the last and greatest of all human dreams; for a transitory enchanted moment man must have held his breath in the presence of this continent, compelled into an aesthetic contemplation he neither understood nor desired, face to face for the last time in history with something commensurate to his capacity for wonder.
—F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby
I go to encounter for the millionth time the reality of experience and to forge in the smithy of my soul the uncreated conscience of my race.
—James Joyce, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
This private estate was far enough away from the explosion so that its bamboos, pines, laurel, and maples were still alive, and the green place invited refugees—partly because they believed that if the Americans came back, they would bomb only buildings; partly because the foliage seemed a center of coolness and life, and the estate’s exquisitely precise rock gardens, with their quiet pools and arching bridges, were very Japanese, normal, secure; and also partly (according to some who were there) because of an irresistible, atavistic urge to hide under leaves.
—John Hersey, Hiroshima
It was a fine cry—loud and long—but it had no bottom and it had no top, just circles and circles of sorrow.
—Toni Morrison, Sula
For what do we live, but to make sport for our neighbors, and laugh at them in our turn?
—Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice
It was the United States of America in the cold late spring of 1967, and the market was steady and the G.N.P. high and a great many articulate people seemed to have a sense of high social purpose and it might have been a spring of brave hopes and national promise, but it was not, and more and more people had the uneasy apprehension that it was not.
—Joan Didion, Slouching Towards Bethlehem
Anger was washed away in the river along with any obligation.
—Ernest Hemingway, A Farewell to Arms
There are many pleasant fictions of the law in constant operation, but there is not one so pleasant or practically humorous as that which supposes every man to be of equal value in its impartial eye, and the benefits of all laws to be equally attainable by all men, without the smallest reference to the furniture of their pockets.
—Charles Dickens, Nicholas Nickleby
In many ways he was like America itself, big and strong, full of good intentions, a roll of fat jiggling at his belly, slow of foot but always plodding along, always there when you needed him, a believer in the virtues of simplicity and directness and hard labor.
—Tim O’Brien, The Things They Carried
There is nothing more atrociously cruel than an adored child.
—Vladimir Nabokov, Lolita
And a bonus:
Like the waters of the river, like the motorists on the highway, and like the yellow trains streaking down the Santa Fe tracks, drama, in the shape of exceptional happenings, had never stopped there.
