The English Regents is a test that eleventh graders in New York are required to take in order to graduate. (There are Regents for every subject area, which are taken in different grades.) The English Regents consists of 4 parts. Students write an essay for each part, plus answer some multiple choice questions. Grading them is a severe pain in the ass, as it involves reading hundreds of essays and grading them using a complicated rubric. There are reading passages in three of the parts (one of the three is a listening passage) which is where I found the word "barbarous."