Hello Everyone,
This is my first time in this board. Some may know me from the K-1 forum from 05-06 and onwards to AOS 06-07.

I intend on applying for citizenship if everything goes A-OK with getting perminent residency and just wanted to get some general knowledge.
I've been practising since K-1 and teaching myself about American History so it's not too new to me but what I wondered was...

Is this going to be a written examination or spoken? I always assumed spoken interview where you're asked 10 or more questions related to America depending on how many you got correct etc. But a family member of my SO is telling me it's BOTH written and spoken and the written part is huge. She's never taken the exam as she's a born US Citizen but worked in the country I cam from for a while and came back to the US. I'm not sure what to believe is right.

Can anybody shed any light?

Fiona & Andrew

At the moment it is an oral exam with some written thrown in depending on who interviews you (and your level of English, I think). The written is a simple test of writing a few sentences. I wouldn't worry too much about swotting up so early. They are planning to change the test, and who knows if it will change again by the time you're ready to file.

My sister took the pilot test last week here in Denver which consists of 142 new questions. All they did was ask her 10 questions and she had to get 6 correct. Then they asked her to write "I understand the English language" on a piece of paper and the rest were just questions regarding her application and small talk. No biggie.

Diana

When I did my citizenship, they made me write a simple sentence and made me read about 3 sentences in both English. It was easy! But that experience was over a decade ago.

Lucy's taking a class offered by a local community organization (yes, I could probably teach her this, but after teaching her to drive, we both decided that our husband/wife relationship is better if we don't clutter it up with a student/teacher relationship). The class is almost finished. The instructor has helped lots of people through the exam, and asks for feedback after her students take the exam, so the instructor is pretty well informed by a variety of experiences. All indications are just like others have posted -- the only written portion is some simple dictation to make sure you can understand and write very simple basic English. The Civics questions are given orally. If you dig around the USCIS site, you can find the list of questions they normally use, plus you can find the list of pilot questions for the revised Civics exam. Many of the questions from the new pilot exam are similar to the old exam; a few are new.

Yep that's how it's done. One oral 10 question exam (he stopped after I got 6 right) and then write a sentance like I think mine was "My sister is making dinner" or something dumb and he also didn't bother with the spoken english as he said he already got my english comprehension by interviewing me already...

Hi Fiona! I was just thinking about you the other day and wondering how you were getting on Good to hear from you again! From what I hear, the citizenship test is pretty basic (and the 'new and improved' test will STILL be pretty simple, you just have to memorise different answers because they're changing the questions!)