The Regents Exam

1
The Regents Exam

• Required of USG students

2
What is the Regents Exam?

• The Regents' Exam is required for all students
  seeking an undergrad degree from a University
  System of Georgia institution.
• Check the class schedule for the exact date and
  the time.

• The Regents' Exam consists of two sections the
  Essay part and the Reading part.
• The Regents Essay section requires students to
  write an essay on one of the four topics given.
• The Regents Reading test consists of 10
  passages.
• They are all multiple-choice and questions on
  elements such as word usage and reading
  comprehension.
• The exam lasts two or more hours, with
  approximately 60 minutes allotted for each
  section.

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What are the essay topics like?

• Regents Essay TestAnswer one of these topics
• Discuss the influence that advertising has had on
  your life or the lives of your friends.
• Why would you like or dislike owning your own
  business?
• In the development of a national budget, which
  should be more importantfighting poverty at home
  or arming to fight an aggressor? Explain.
• Discuss why people are fascinated by amusement
  parks such as Disney World and Six Flags.

The next slide shows how to answer the
advertising question.
4
How to answer an essay question

• In America, advertising seems to program our
  minds. Ads appear everywhere in the mediain
  newspapers, radio, and TV programs. Advertising
  has influenced my life in my selection of food,
  clothing, and cars.
• I try to resist, but advertising does affect my
  __ choices. After ignoring all the McDonalds
  ads, I still find myself munching french fries.
  Even the Olive Garden ads send me there to taste
  the endless pastabilities.
• Advertising also influences my __ selections.
  Michael Jordan promotes Hanes underwear, and I
  end up in his t-shirts. The Penneys circular
  tells of massive sales, so I buy their brand of
  socks on a 25 discount.
• Ads even impact my choice in ___. The Toyota
  slogan moving forward agrees with me. Is it
  just my imagination that my Camry drives better
  than the next guys Chevy?
• Advertising has affected my purchases in
  several areas. I wonder how different my life
  would be without all the ads?

This essay features two background statements
and a thesis in the introduction, topic sentences
followed by detailed supporting sentences in the
body paragraphs, a rephrased thesis statement
and a concluding thought in the conclusion.
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What are other Regents essay topics?

• What influence should students have in the
  determination of college policies? Explain.
• Has college made you less sure about what is
  right and what is wrong? Discuss.
• How has your attitude toward your home (either
  town or family) changed between the time you
  entered college and now? Discuss.
• If your doctor told you that you had only a few
  months to live, how would you alter your way of
  life? Discuss.
• Name someone you consider to be a modern hero or
  heroine and explain why.
• Do college students benefit from participation in
  extracurricular activities? Explain.

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Which essay type will you write?

• Exam topics form three primary categories
• Personal ones requiring no outside or previous
  knowledge (Do you prefer shopping at large
  shopping malls or in smaller downtown areas?)
• Impersonal ones requiring outside knowledge (Is
  it time for the United States to abandon the
  two-party political structure?)
• Personal/impersonal ones requiring outside or
  previous knowledge (What are some of the effects
  on American society of the increasing numbers of
  women in the workplace?).
• Knowing beforehand in which category you write
  stronger essays can help you immensely.

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How do you use the time?

• You will receive time cues during the test.
• Allot 10 minutes to plan your essay, save the
  last 10 minutes to proof your essay, and to use
  the rest to write it.
• You may use a dictionary during the last fifteen
  minutes, but extra paper and notes will not be
  permitted.

Is the pen mightier than the sword?
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What about generalities and details?

• Detail is most important on this exam.
• Generalizations and assertions alone do not work
  well as arguments.
• The more you use appropriate concrete details,
  the better chance your essay has of passing.
• To make them more plausible, try locating your
  examples in time and space (example When I was
  a senior at Dalton High rather than When I was
  a kid).

How specific is this thought?
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Where should you add specifics?

• Provide specific detailsincluding __in the body
  paragraphs.
• a. facts and opinions,
• b. technical terms and special definitions,
• c. names and numbers,
• d. interesting sidebars and odd anecdotes,
• e. statistical oddities and irrelevant comments.

• Present your opinion in the __ and in the __
  sentences.
• a. thesis and topic
• b. first and last
• c. central and middle
• Give generalities in the __ and in the __.
• a. thesis and topic,
• b. introduction and conclusion,
• c. central and middle portions

Can we label all the parts of an essay?
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Here are the answers

• Provide specific detailsincluding __in the body
  paragraphs.
• a. facts and opinions,
• b. technical terms and special definitions,
• c. names and numbers,
• d. interesting sidebars and odd anecdotes,
• e. statistical oddities and irrelevant comments.

• Present your opinion in the __ and in the __
  sentences.
• a. thesis and topic
• b. first and last
• c. central and middle
• Give generalities in the __ and in the __.
• a. thesis and topic,
• b. introduction and conclusion,
• c. central and middle portions

Can we label all the parts of an essay?
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What kind of start and finish?

• A vague opening will lessen the impact of your
  essay.
• Get to the point or thesis rather than write a
  ten-sentence opening that leaves insufficient
  time for the rest.
• Avoid merely repeating or summarizing your points
  in your conclusion.
• Opt for a speculative conclusion (Perhaps in the
  future . . .) or anecdotal (As my father once
  put it . . .) they're more interesting and much
  more memorable.

How happy is the kid with the result?
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Which introduction has a real point?

• B. Since 9/11, the trade-offs between security
  and freedom have become very real. Recently, the
  US president has had the police monitor all phone
  calls and email. In one fell sweep, this bold
  action removes personal privacy, breaks national
  law, and leaves us to ask, What next?

A. There are many hard decisions that have to be
made. The US president doesnt have the luxury of
making many easy calls. Although lots of liberals
dislike the presidents choice for wholesale
phone tapping, most true conservatives know that
at least he made a real decision!
The best thesis provide three talking points
for the rest of the essay.
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Introduction b has better points!

• Since 9/11, the trade-offs between security and
  freedom have become very real. Recently, the US
  president has had the police monitor all phone
  calls and email. In one fell sweep, this bold
  action removes personal privacy, breaks national
  law, and leaves us to ask, What next?
• The argument here for the president not to have
  wiretapping is that the move creates three
  serious problems for Americans.

• There are many hard decisions that have to be
  made. The US president doesnt have the luxury of
  making many easy calls. Although lots of liberals
  dislike the presidents choice for wholesale
  phone tapping, most true conservatives know that
  at least he made a real decision!
• The basic argument here for the president
  pushing wiretapping is that it is a bold movebut
  wasnt Hitler pretty bold, too?

The best theses provide three talking points
for the rest of the essay.
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How useful is original thinking?

• Retain the logic of your overall argument.
• Well-known names or historical facts must be
  accurate.
• Dont just make up facts, statistics, or
  quotations like Half of all people who speed
  eventually have auto accidents.
• Use more reasonable estimates about two-thirds
  of college students dont vote.

Is original thinking a prized skill?
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To whom are you writing?

• Think about who is reading your essay and what
  the reader cares about.
• After all, youre trying to convince your readers
  that what you are saying is a reasonable answer
  to the question.
• Alienating or offending your readers is poor
  salesmanship.

Is technology good for family communication?
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Which offends Regents readers?

• B. Professors represent the amazing resource
  that any college student could imagine. Not only
  do these experts possess vast bodies of
  specialized information due to their years of
  advanced education, but they also bring to the
  classroom many years of rich and varied life
  experiences. Thus, wise students realize and even
  cherish their professors many talents.

A. Although professors are more educated and
experienced, college students should decide class
hours, class content, and grades. Students
should make the calls because they are the
consumers, and the customer is always right. In
the new classroom, one will be left behind, and
that is the arrogant, snobby professor of the
past. Students rule!
An excellent call is praising rather than
criticizing ones judges.
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How do you proofread for errors?

• Proofread carefully for errors that you have.
• Developing a list of your personal writing
  demons.
• Read your sentences in reverse order to help you
  see them out of context.
• If you have trouble with word-level errors
  (spelling, apostrophes, etc.), you may also try
  reading your essay in reverse word by word.

Is Billy skilled at noting details?
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Which theses are better?

• In general, advertising has failed to change the
  lives of my friends and myself for the better.
  Rather, it is a waste of our collective time.
• Id like to own my own business because it would
  allow me to choose when, where, and what to do.
• In the development of a national budget fighting
  poverty at home is more important than arming to
  fight an aggressor.
• People are fascinated by amusement parks such as
  Disney World and Six Flags because of their great
  rides, interesting environments, and curious
  crowds.

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Does this essay score 1, 2, or 3?

• Should government do more to discourage
  smoking? "The High Rate for Cancer Has Decreased
  Because Cigarettes are Off the Market" would be a
  nice headline if the government did more to
  discourage cigarette smoking and succeeds. The
  government should do more to discourage cigarette
  smoking because this would decrease the high
  cancer percentage and help many people break
  their habit. First, if the government does do
  more to discourage cigarette smoking it may
  succeed and there would be a tremendous decrease
  in the cancer percentage. Although, cigarettes
  are not the only items on market that cause
  cancer, but if cigarettes are removed, then there
  would be one less item on market that does cause
  cancer. Second, if the government does more to
  discourage cigarette smoking it would help many
  people kick the smoking habit. There are many
  people trying to stop smoking but can not. If the
  government succeeds at it's effort to discourage
  cigarette smoking many people, especially the
  smokers, would be very happy because they would
  no longer have to worry about trying to stop
  smoking. In conclusion, if the government
  succeeds at it's attempt to discourage cigarette
  smoking, this would be a great benefit for the
  smokers, because they would have kicked the habit
  and helped the cancer rate to decrease in the
  nonsmokers.

This essay has no factual support!
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Does this essay score 1, 2, or 3?

• 2. WHAT CHARACTERISTICS DO YOU REGARD AS
  IMPORTANT IN A PERSON YOU WOULD CHOOSE AS A
  FRIEND? The characteristics that I look for in a
  friend do not hinge upon that person's appearance
  or physical prowess but that person's inner self.
  The qualities that I look for in a friend are the
  ones that take time to find. The qualities I
  consider most important are honesty, loyalty, and
  kindness. When I look for honesty in a friend I,
  of course, look for someone who does not cheat or
  steal. For example, I would not like to cover up
  for a friend I saw stealing from a store or from
  someone else. Although this I do consider
  important, I also want a friend who is honest
  about his emotions or feelings on a subject. I
  want a friend who will tell me how he feels even
  if it might hurt my feelings. Another important
  quality that I look for is loyalty. The term
  loyalty, to me, means someone who would stick by
  me when my convictions were on the line even if
  it meant he would also be ridiculed by the
  majority. This I believe shows a person of great
  inner strength. The characteristic that I
  consider most important is kindness. A person who
  would go well out of his way to see a sick friend
  is a person that I would consider kind. Kindness,
  to me, is also someone who would go to comfort a
  friend who had a relative die or care for a sick
  animal even though it was not his own. Although
  there are many more characteristics that I look
  for in a friend these are the ones that I
  consider most important. These qualities show to
  me a well rounded person.

This essay supports through explanation.
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Does this essay score 1, 2, or 3?

• 3. "THE CURRENT GENERATION IS LAZY AND LACKS
  DISCIPLINE." DEFEND OR ATTACK THIS
  STATEMENT. Each generation has been accused of
  being lazy and lacking discipline. Eventually
  each generation becomes productive, despite
  previous predictions to the contrary. The
  "Roaring Twenties" era is a good example of a
  generation of people wrongly accused as lazy and
  undisciplined. The great "Prohibition" of 1919
  did little to stop the consumption of alcohol.
  Speakeasy saloons became easily accessible -- And
  what mother did not gasp at the revolutionary
  styles so-called "Flappers" donned? However, this
  very same generation faced the Great Depression
  just ten years later. Many families were ruined
  financially and the poor were even poorer.
  Somehow they survived and became a better people
  for it. I doubt if the outcome had anything to do
  with being "lazy" or "lacking discipline." An
  even more recent example of a generation "gone
  bad" is the "sixties." On every campus students
  wore ragged blue jeans with at least one patch,
  usually a peace sign. Music of that generation
  was acid rock and anti-war. Girls wore short
  hair, men wore long hair. The older people
  wondered what to think of this new "lazy"
  generation that "lacked" discipline. This
  generation grew-up, too, many of them whizzing us
  into the computer age and forging the fields of
  technology. Surely there will be more
  generations in the future prematurely judged, and
  unjustly labeled "lazy", "undisciplined." Dont
  stereotype generations yet to come. It would be
  well if everyone would accept others choices.

This essay names a lot of factual support.
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What about the reading exam?

• The Regents' Testing Program Reading Test is a
  multiple-choice test with 54 items in one hour.
• The test consists of nine reading passages with
  five to eight questions about each passage.
• The passages are from magazines (e.g., Newsweek,
  National Geographic), newspapers, literary works,
  and other written material that, in the judgment
  of committees of faculty members, all students
  receiving college degrees should be able to
  comprehend.
• The passages on the test usually range from 175
  to 325 words in length, treat topics drawn from a
  variety of subject areas (social science,
  mathematics and natural science, and humanities),
  and entail various modes of discourse
  (exposition, narration, and argumentation).

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Which reading areas are covered?

• Vocabulary entails identifying the meanings of
  words as they are used in passages.
• The student may use context clues, structural
  analysis and/or a general understanding of the
  meaning of the passage to determine the meaning
  of a word.

• Literal Comprehension information and ideas
  presented explicitly.
• (1) details or facts,
• (2) a sequence of events,
• (3) a comparative relationship,
• (4) a cause and effect relationship, or
• (5) the referent for which words has been
  substituted in a passage.

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Which reading areas are covered?

• Inferential Comprehension involves the
  following skills
• (1) identifying the main idea of a passage or
  paragraph,
• (2) inductive reasoning,
• (3) deductive reasoning, and
• (4) interpretation of figurative or other
  language.

• Analysis is concerned with how or why a passage
  is written rather than what a passage is about.
• In general, analysis items require inferences to
  be made about the style, purpose, or organization
  of a passage.

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• Can you answer the reading questions?
• In the last sentence, the "I" referred to in "I
  won't wait" is 1. intelligence. 2. a machine.
  3. a man. 4. time.
• 2. Man is servant to the machine in 1. business.
  2. the work force. 3. automation. 4. the mass
  production line.

• A mass production line is a timing machine which
  moves goods from place to place in a given time.
  In that given time, a man has to be available to
  perform a given task. He is in many ways a slave
  of the machine. It fixes his time and movements
  he has to produce a series of semi-intelligent
  mechanical motions to keep the machine fed and
  moving. Thus mechanization is master. Automation,
  on the contrary, by being a self-adapting and a
  changing piece of mechanism, enables a man to
  work at any pace he wants because the machine
  will react. He is the master of the machine,
  except in the simpler processes. The machine that
  forms part of an automated system is not
  predetermined it gives information and suggests
  a course of action, but it does not say "I won't
  wait."

26

• You can answer the reading questions
• In the last sentence, the "I" referred to in "I
  won't wait" is 1. intelligence. 2. a machine.
  3. a man. 4. time.
• 2. Man is servant to the machine in 1. business.
  2. the work force. 3. automation. 4. the mass
  production line.

• A mass production line is a timing machine which
  moves goods from place to place in a given time.
  In that given time, a man has to be available to
  perform a given task. He is in many ways a slave
  of the machine. It fixes his time and movements
  he has to produce a series of semi-intelligent
  mechanical motions to keep the machine fed and
  moving. Thus mechanization is master. Automation,
  on the contrary, by being a self-adapting and a
  changing piece of mechanism, enables a man to
  work at any pace he wants because the machine
  will react. He is the master of the machine,
  except in the simpler processes. The machine that
  forms part of an automated system is not
  predetermined it gives information and suggests
  a course of action, but it does not say "I won't
  wait."

27

• 3. With which statements would the author agree?
  1. Automation and the mass production line work
  equally well. 2. Neither automation nor the mass
  production line works well. 3. Automation is
  more flexible than the mass production line. 4.
  The mass production line is more flexible than
  automation.

• A mass production line is a timing machine which
  moves goods from place to place in a given time.
  In that given time, a man has to be available to
  perform a given task. He is in many ways a slave
  of the machine. It fixes his time and movements
  he has to produce a series of semi-intelligent
  mechanical motions to keep the machine fed and
  moving. Thus mechanization is master. Automation,
  on the contrary, by being a self-adapting and a
  changing piece of mechanism, enables a man to
  work at any pace he wants because the machine
  will react. He is the master of the machine,
  except in the simpler processes. The machine that
  forms part of an automated system is not
  predetermined it gives information and suggests
  a course of action, but it does not say "I won't
  wait."

28

• 3. With which statements would the author agree?
  1. Automation and the mass production line work
  equally well. 2. Neither automation nor the mass
  production line works well. 3. Automation is
  more flexible than the mass production line. 4.
  The mass production line is more flexible than
  automation.

• A mass production line is a timing machine which
  moves goods from place to place in a given time.
  In that given time, a man has to be available to
  perform a given task. He is in many ways a slave
  of the machine. It fixes his time and movements
  he has to produce a series of semi-intelligent
  mechanical motions to keep the machine fed and
  moving. Thus mechanization is master. Automation,
  on the contrary, by being a self-adapting and a
  changing piece of mechanism, enables a man to
  work at any pace he wants because the machine
  will react. He is the master of the machine,
  except in the simpler processes. The machine that
  forms part of an automated system is not
  predetermined it gives information and suggests
  a course of action, but it does not say "I won't
  wait."

29

• 4. Which does the author primarily use in this
  passage? 1. comparison-contrast 2. narration
  3. specific examples 4. personal experience

• A mass production line is a timing machine which
  moves goods from place to place in a given time.
  In that given time, a man has to be available to
  perform a given task. He is in many ways a slave
  of the machine. It fixes his time and movements
  he has to produce a series of semi-intelligent
  mechanical motions to keep the machine fed and
  moving. Thus mechanization is master. Automation,
  on the contrary, by being a self-adapting and a
  changing piece of mechanism, enables a man to
  work at any pace he wants because the machine
  will react. He is the master of the machine,
  except in the simpler processes. The machine that
  forms part of an automated system is not
  predetermined it gives information and suggests
  a course of action, but it does not say "I won't
  wait."

30

• 4. Which does the author primarily use in this
  passage? 1. comparison-contrast 2. narration
  3. specific examples 4. personal experience

• A mass production line is a timing machine which
  moves goods from place to place in a given time.
  In that given time, a man has to be available to
  perform a given task. He is in many ways a slave
  of the machine. It fixes his time and movements
  he has to produce a series of semi-intelligent
  mechanical motions to keep the machine fed and
  moving. Thus mechanization is master. Automation,
  on the contrary, by being a self-adapting and a
  changing piece of mechanism, enables a man to
  work at any pace he wants because the machine
  will react. He is the master of the machine,
  except in the simpler processes. The machine that
  forms part of an automated system is not
  predetermined it gives information and suggests
  a course of action, but it does not say "I won't
  wait."