How to Write a Regents Essay

							                            REGENTS’ TESTING PROGRAM
                                  ESSAY TEST

Choose one of the following topics. Put an “X” in the box to indicate your choice.

      If you had to choose a few words to describe yourself, what words would you
      choose and why? Explain.
      If for some reason you were prevented from getting a college education, what
      career would you pursue? Why?
      Discuss a stereotype that you once believed but that later proved inaccurate or a
      current stereotype that you believe is inaccurate. Expalin.
      What advice would you give to your former high school teachers about preparing
      students for college? Explain.


Begin your essay on the first lined page. You may use the space below for an outline or
notes. (Remember to use a pen to write your essay. Essays written in pencil will not be
graded.)




Directions for the Regents’ Essay Assignment, Part I, In-Class Essay
What you see above is the typical essay format you will see in your actual Regents’ Essay test.
Here’re some additional instructions for this part of our assignment.

You have exactly one hour to complete the essay. Please follow the steps below:
   1. Before you start, save this file in the following format:
       “Regents(YourLastNameYourFirstNameInitial),” e.g., “Regents(SmithJ).” Save it in a
       secure place, such as your H-drive or a flash drive. Save often during your writing.
   2. Copy the topic you’re going to write about and paste it toward the top of the next page
       right beneath the name block.
   3. Once you have completed your essay, email a copy to me at bgu@gsu.edu as an
       attachment.
   4. In the remaining minutes of this class period, find a partner you want to work with for the
       peer response part of the assignment and exchange electronic copies of your essay (e.g.,
       through email).
   5. Download a copy of the Peer Response Guide from my Handouts page and start working
       on responding to your classmate’s essay outside class.
Your Name
English 1101
Regents Essay
September 3, 2008
Revised Essay
To: Your Classmate’s Name
From: Your Name
Date: September 10, 2008
Re:   Peer Response to Your Regents’ Essay

You can write your peer response in the memo format. If you have never written a memo
before, you don’t need a salutation like “Dear So and So” in the beginning or a signature
block at the end. Following are some general guidelines or considerations for you when
you construct your peer response.

Audiences and Purposes
You have two different audiences for your peer response: your classmate and me. Your
first and most important audience is your classmate. Keep in mind that you’re responding
to an essay written by your classmate. In most cases, you probably have both positive and
negative things to say about your classmate’s essay. It’s certainly easy to convey the
positive feedback, but what about the negative feedback? How do you convey it in such a
way that your classmate will happily accept it and will be willing to consider and
incorporate your suggestions when revising his/her essay? A good peer response requires
a lot of tact. At the same time, don’t just say nice things and overlook all the flaws of the
essay just because you don’t want to hurt your classmate’s feelings. Keep in mind the
ultimate purpose for the peer response is to help your classmate identify the strengths and
weaknesses of the essay and improve it whenever possible.

As your secondary audience, I will carefully examine how you communicated your
feedback to your classmate: whether you did it both honestly and tactfully, how effective
your rhetorical strategies were in conveying your feedback. A second major aspect I’ll be
assessing is the quality of your feedback: how much sense it makes, whether it’s on target,
whether it will truly help your classmate improve his/her paper.

Content and Organization
To build your ethos and establish trust with your audience, you might want to start your
peer response with some positive feedback. The rest of the memo could certainly be
organized in several different ways. One possible organization, for example, is to use the
categories provided in the Peer Response Guide and format those categories as your
headings. Another possible organization is to use the categories in the Grading Rubric.

Format
How do you format a memo? Well, if you follow my example here, you should be ok.
Make sure you put in your classmate’s real name in the “To” field and your real name in
the “From” field in the memo head.

Questions?
Email me: bgu@gsu.edu.

IMPORTANT!!
Email me as well as your classmate a copy of your peer response by midnight on
September 10, 2008. You can simply cc me when you email your classmate.