Hi i have been living in america for over tens years and i am married to a us citizen. I have wanted to apply for citizenship but i am worried about the test. get nervous when asked alot of questions.Any advice or people that have gone through the test and the kind of questions they ask you. i know there is 100 but do they stick to the american color, president, what the stars and stripes mean.
thanks mark

Just learn them parrot fashion with cue cards. You don't have to write essays; just give them the short answer they want.

As part of the process you are given a booklet that lists the questions and the answers. Learn them, specifically learn the answer they want to hear.

Some of them are really stupidly easy like what is the ocean on the west coast?

I think you can also download them from the uscis.gov

There are three parts to the test:

1) Reading - you will be given a piece of paper with one of the questions on to read out

2) Writing - you will be given a piece of paper on which you must transcribe the answer

3) the questions, asked orally up to ten but they will stop as soon as you hit 6 correct.

It's a piece of piss, the only people that really have trouble with it are probably ESL people.

I'm in a similar stage of the process. Has anyone here heard of anyone "failing" purely on the test questions?

edit : In case OP, or me misunderstands, there are 100 questions to learn, they only ask 10 or so, not all of them, right?

I really don't know how it would be possible. It's an hour's work....or two if you've only got the brain of Bush 43.

http://www.uscis.gov/portal/site/usc...00b92ca60aRCRD

I sent in my N-400 a week ago last Friday, got the receipt in the mail on Saturday, checked the status of my case number on the website and they've sent out the appointment for finger prints (which they already have of course so quite why they need them again, I don't know). Made myself some flash cards today and will just learn the answers they want to hear.

The website is helpful. Go for it!

Yes, you can fail, if you don't get 6 out of 10 correct. If you fail, you can retake the test at no charge at least once more, if not twice (not sure on that one). On a different date, not the same day as the one you failed.

There are 100 test questions to learn. You will be asked up to 10 random ones. You must get 6 correct. If you get the first 6 correct, the testing stops there.

If my Iranian husband, who spoke zero English when he arrived 5 years before taking the test, could memorize them....any native English speaker can do it.

Rene

If it helps there is also a couple of practice sites on the internet.

Myself and my other half did this, we're only at the K1 stage but it was more of an interesting thing to do (she also took the British citizenship test).

I got 100% on the US Citizenship test. She, a Masters graduate from University of Denver in Social Policy, got 96%!

I will admit I only knew one of my answers as she had campaigned for the relevant Senator, and a further one was a total guess - but it didn't strike me that it was the most difficult test in the world.

A rudimentary knowledge of your state and national politics seems necessary.

For interest, we both failed the UK Citizenship test which struck me as much more difficult!

(Clearly, this didn't include the elements relating to reading & writing, we were both comfortable we would get that right).

Stick to USCIS, there is no guarantee "other sites" will have the correct questions and more importantly the correct answers.

The current civics booklet (note some of the answers will possibly change following the election, I guess they will print a new one next year)

What usually happens with Americans particularly ones with degrees in politics and the like is they try to give overly complex answers. e.g. Name one problem that lead to the civil war? Just say Slavery.

I'll never forget when I was practicing the questions with my husband, some of his answers came out funny because of his lack of English skills and foreign accent.

When I asked him the practice question "what was Abraham Lincoln famous for?" His answer was "he fried the slaves!" I made sure he practiced the difference in pronunciation between "fried" and 'freed"!!! LOL

Rene

Besides learning the history of the US government, make sure that you know the names of the senator and congressman who currently represent the district where you live -- that seems to be a popular question. And don't get tripped up if they change in November!

My husband took the test in August and was incredibly paranoid about the knowledge test. Even though he had been studying the questions non-stop and could recite the questions and answers perfectly, he's a musician and doesn't always process information like 'the rest of us' - so he was afraid that in the heat of the moment his mind would go blank.

That didn't happen - he rattled off the answers to the first six questions he was asked and was done with the whole interview in about 10 minutes. He was stunned it all happened so quickly!

While he was studying he and I discussed the reasons/history behind the answers and came up with mnemonics to remember dates and names. He found it all very fascinating and is now reading up on US history - he can't believe the country is only 200-odd years old!