UniGeniusHigh school equivalency

Practice

Essay practice

The Writing subtest ends with one essay: read two texts on an issue, then argue your own position with evidence from both texts and your own experience. The real subtest gives 120 minutes for the essay and 60 questions together.

The essay lesson

Choose a topic

Text 1: Gregory Haines, Safety manager at Brightwater Distribution, a warehouse company in Carver City

Phones Belong in the Locker, Not on the Floor

Last spring, a forklift driver at our Carver City warehouse glanced at a text message while turning into an aisle. He clipped a shelving unit, and about 400 pounds of boxed stock fell where a coworker had been standing ten seconds earlier. No one was hurt that day, but our incident reports told a troubling story: in 2025, phones played a part in 9 of our 31 recorded near misses.

That fall, we asked everyone on the warehouse floor to leave personal phones in their lockers during shifts. Workers can check their phones during two 15-minute breaks and a 30-minute lunch. Anyone expecting an urgent call can give family members the number of the front office, which is staffed at all times. In the first six months under the new rule, near misses fell from 16 to 7 compared with the same six months a year earlier.

Some workers called the rule a sign of distrust. I understand that feeling, but the rule is about attention, not character. Even careful people look down when a phone buzzes. A screen takes a driver's eyes off a moving load for only a second or two, and a second is all an accident needs.

Phones have a place at work: in offices, in break rooms and in emergencies. On a floor full of moving machines, however, a ban protects everyone, including the workers who dislike it most.

Text 2: Tamara Reyes, Shift lead at the Delmar food processing plant and parent of two

Trust Workers to Use Their Phones Wisely

I have worked at the Delmar plant for eleven years, and I have two children in elementary school. When the school nurse called last March to say my son had a high fever, I answered on the second ring and was at the school within half an hour. Under the ban our managers have proposed, that call would have gone to a front office phone, where a message can sit for an hour.

A blanket ban treats every worker like the most careless one. In a survey of 180 workers at our plant, 72 percent said they had used a phone at work in the past month for a family matter, such as a sick child or a ride home. Only 6 percent said a phone had ever distracted them while they ran a machine.

Safety matters, and some jobs do need limits. A forklift driver should not be texting. The answer, though, is a clear rule for those jobs, enforced by supervisors, not a ban on everyone from the shipping clerk to the quality inspector. Many of us also use our phones for work: we photograph damaged pallets and check delivery schedules.

When a company trusts its people with reasonable rules, people tend to live up to that trust. A total ban sends the opposite message, and good workers notice.

Write an essay in which you explain your own position on whether employers should ban personal cell phones during work shifts. Use specific reasons and examples from your own experience and knowledge, and evidence from the passages. Acknowledge the opposing view. Then check your spelling, punctuation and grammar.

0 words

Three more topics, every lesson and the full-length tests come with the course. See the course