This video serves as a comprehensive study guide for the GED social studies test, providing strategies to pass the exam and breaking down practice questions. The video covers a variety of topics, including the US Constitution, reconstruction policies, propaganda, and climate change. The instructor offers tips on how to approach questions, such as using process of elimination or finding clues in the passage to identify the correct answer. The video also provides advice on interpreting graphs and identifying cause-and-effect relationships.
00:00:00 In this section of the video, the speaker provides a study guide for the GED social studies test and offers strategies to help viewers pass the exam. The speaker then goes through an excerpt from the study guide and breaks down a practice question on the main idea, offering tips for identifying clues to the correct answer. The answer to the example question is "B," natural rights, which is supported by the repetition of the word "rights" in the passage. The speaker also briefly explains the concepts of nationalism and imperialism and suggests that looking for matching words between passage and answer choices can be a helpful strategy.
00:05:00 In this section, the video discusses the 17th Amendment, which allowed for the direct election of Senators in the US. The passage explains the four methods of amending the US Constitution, and the question revolves around what the word "convention" means in the context of the passage and the chart. The video offers an analogy to help viewers understand the system of US elections in which there are two main political parties and candidates are selected through primary elections followed by formal assemblies called conventions. The correct answer to the question is B, which means "formal assembly." The video also explains the concept of a delegate, who is an elected representative that participates in the convention to select the party's candidate.
00:10:00 In this section, the instructor discusses two GED social studies questions and provides tips on how to approach them. The first question involves using substitution as a strategy to determine the correct answer. The second question requires analyzing an excerpt from President Barack Obama's 2017 farewell address to identify the unstated purpose of his speech, which is to convince the audience to actively participate in government by voting. The instructor explains that the audience in this case is the citizens who will be voting, and not the incoming administration or newly elected members of Congress. The instructor also clarifies the meaning of the term "incoming administration" and provides an overview of US presidential elections.
00:15:00 section focuses on a practice question regarding the distinction between facts and opinions in a speech made by former President George H.W. Bush in January 1991 about Iraq's invasion of Kuwait. The correct answer is identified as option D, "We have seen too often in this Century how quickly any threat to one becomes a threat to all" because it is a vague and general statement that cannot be proven or checked like a fact. The section also briefly explains the differences between facts and opinions and provides examples for each.
00:20:00 In this section, the instructor discusses a question about Hamilton's essay and Madison's letter regarding the Bill of Rights. The question asks how Hamilton's essay differs from Madison's letter. The instructor explains that while there are multiple ways to approach the question, the easiest way is to recognize that Hamilton argues against the Bill of Rights, while Madison argues for it. This makes answer choice D, "only Hamilton says that a Bill of Rights would damage the safeguards of Liberty in the proposed Constitution," the correct answer. Additionally, the instructor provides helpful tips for eliminating answer choices by using process of elimination and looking for details in the text.
00:25:00 In this section, the video discusses a passage about the Federalists and Anti-Federalists and their beliefs about the Constitution of the United States. The Federalists believed that the Constitution was fine as it was and did not need a Bill of Rights, while the Anti-Federalists wanted a Bill of Rights. The video explains that understanding this topic is important because it could come up on the GED social studies test. The following passage is about reconstruction policies after President Lincoln's assassination, where President Andrew Johnson and Radical Republicans battled for control of reconstruction. The question asks which event in the passage happened second, and the correct answer is B, where Radical Republicans at Congress took control of reconstruction.
00:30:00 In this section of the video, the narrator discusses a question related to the order of events during the Reconstruction period after President Lincoln's assassination. The answer is CBDA, with Lincoln proposing mild conditions first, followed by The Radical Republicans and President Johnson disagreeing over reconstruction policies, then the Radical Republicans taking control of reconstruction, and civil and political rights ultimately being granted to African-American men. The narrator also discusses a question regarding communism and capitalism, in which the answer is classless society is associated with communism. Finally, the narrator talks about a question related to propaganda, with the answer being a website that lists biased information is the most likely example of propaganda.
00:35:00 reporting on the history of taxes on wealthy American citizens, it's not necessarily propaganda. Propaganda is trying to change someone's point of view by appealing to their emotions, and D doesn't seem to fit that definition. So, the best example of propaganda in this question is C, a wartime cartoon that claims American citizens who fail to pay taxes are helping the enemy. It's important to use a process of elimination and look for the answer that fits the definition of propaganda the most accurately.
00:40:00 In this section, the video discusses how to identify propaganda by asking whether the information is trying to change someone's point of view by using loaded language, cartoons, and appealing to emotions. The video provides examples of historical facts being presented without propaganda and a pamphlet that could potentially use propaganda. The video then goes on to show a graph with the number of female representatives in the U.S. House of Representatives from 1917 to 2011. The question asks which session of Congress had twice as many female representatives as the 101st session, and the video explains how to solve the problem by finding the dot on the graph that corresponds to the 101st session and estimating the number of female representatives to be 29, which is then doubled to get the answer of 58 in the 110th session.
00:45:00 In this section, the video explains how to solve a tricky question regarding finding which session of Congress had twice as many women Representatives as the 101st session. The video shows how to estimate the number of female Representatives in the 101st session and double it to 58, the number needed to answer the question. By looking at a graph of the number of women Representatives over time, the video eliminates several answer choices and pinpoints the correct session, 106. The video emphasizes that graph questions are likely on the GED Social Studies test, and while there are different ways to approach such questions, following the steps outlined in the video can help.
00:50:00 In this section, the video provides an excerpt about the relationship between greenhouse gas emissions and Earth's surface temperature, explaining that as greenhouse gas emissions increase, Earth's temperature will also rise. The video also gives tips on how to read and interpret graphs, where a line going uphill usually represents an increase, a line going downhill represents a decrease, and a flat line means there's no change. These tips are important in answering the question about which graph represents the relationship discussed in the given excerpt.
00:55:00 In this section, the video presents a practice question that asks which graph represents the relationship between greenhouse gas emissions and Earth's surface temperature discussed in a given excerpt. The narrator highlights the sentence that states greenhouse gas emissions increase Earth's surface temperature as the key point to identify an increase in the graph and a relationship between the two factors. The correct answer is graph B, which shows an increase in greenhouse gas emissions and Earth's surface temperature. Next, the video provides a passage about the rebellion in the 13 colonies in 1775 that led to the Revolutionary War and asks which option represents a cause and effect relationship. The narrator explains why option A is not correct and then analyzes option B, stating it as the right answer, as the passage clearly shows that accumulating debts from the French and Indian War led Britain to impose new taxes on the colonies, causing the colonists to prepare for war.
This YouTube video titled "Ultimate GED Social Studies Study Guide & Practice Test to Pass Easily in 2023!" provides helpful tips for passing the GED social studies test. The speaker focuses on cause and effect relationships and demonstrates how to identify direct links between events, rather than assuming they lead to one another. He also explains how to calculate the range of a data set, finding the largest and smallest numbers and subtracting them, using the example of urban areas. The video briefly touches on mean, median, and mode, which are important for GED questions in multiple sections.
01:00:00 In this section, the speaker discusses cause and effect relationships and how to look for direct links between events. Specifically, he uses the example of the colonists protesting taxes and the British soldiers firing on them at Lexington and Concord - while the two events are related, they did not directly lead to one another. The speaker also explains how to calculate the range of a data set - to do so, you find the largest and smallest numbers and subtract them. The range of the given urban areas in the table is 16.8 million. The speaker also briefly mentions mean, median, and mode, which are fair game for GED questions in multiple sections.