Each year, hundreds of thousands of people who did not finish high school study to take the battery of GED examinations. A GED diploma opens up a new level of career, education, and compensation opportunities for them. This crash course helps them get up to speed quickly on the five major subject areas they will be tested on, and gives them test-taking practice and hints. The easy-to-use Complete Idiot''s Guide® format distills the information to its simplest and makes it easy to grasp and remember the essential concepts and facts readers must know to pass the GED tests. Subjects covered include: Language Arts-Writing: Sentences; parts of speech; grammar; punctuation; writing cohesive paragraphs; and planning, writing, and editing essays. Social Studies: U.S. history, government and civics, economics, world history, and geography. Science: Scientific method, health and environment, biology, chemistry, physics, and earth and space science. Language Arts-Reading: Fiction, poetry, drama, business writing, and nonfiction prose. Mathematics: Number sense, arithmetic, measurement, geometry, statistics and probability, and algebra functions. The book also includes a half-length practice test for each of the five subjects, as well as extensive in-chapter practice sets and answer keys. An introductory chapter covers test-taking hints and strategies.