{"id":3640,"date":"2007-11-12T10:12:59","date_gmt":"2007-11-12T10:12:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.paradisec.org.au\/blog\/2007\/11\/i-speak-english-and-i-can-prove-it\/"},"modified":"2011-02-05T07:49:19","modified_gmt":"2011-02-05T07:49:19","slug":"i-speak-english-and-i-can-prove-it","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.paradisec.org.au\/blog\/2007\/11\/i-speak-english-and-i-can-prove-it\/","title":{"rendered":"I speak English, and I can prove it"},"content":{"rendered":"

One of my prized possessions after having lived in the UK for five years now is a “Pass Notification Letter” which I received on 30th October 2007 when I sat for the Life in the UK Test<\/a> administered by the Border and Immigration Service of the Home Office. The letter states:<\/p>\n

Following your test today in knowledge of life in the United Kingdom this is to certify that you have reached the level required for the purposes of obtaining indefinite leave to remain \u2013 Your success in this test also demonstrates that your level of competence in English meets the required standard for naturalisation or indefinite leave to remain. No further proof of this is needed.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I had to sit the test because my work permit ended on 10th November and I wanted to apply for “indefinite leave to remain”, ie. permanent residence (rather than apply for a further 5 year work permit extension). Since April this year everyone applying to stay in the UK or become a naturalised citizen has to sit and pass the test, or else take a certified ESOL course. The test is administered by computer and has 24 questions that must be answered within 45 minutes \u2013 a pass of at least 75% is required. I bought a Life in the UK Test Study Guide<\/i> (which says on the cover it is “the essential study guide for British citizenship & settlement tests, over 100,000 copies sold”) for \u00a37.99 and boned up on the five chapters (A Changing Society, UK Today: A Profile, How the United Kingdom is Governed, Everyday Needs, Employment) and took the 10 sample tests in the back. Feeling apprehensive but somewhat prepared I paid my \u00a334 fee and joined 25 other hopeful applicants in the basement of my local registered test centre where we were shouted at by a Test Authoriser that we were “under examination conditions \u2013 if anyone looks at another person’s computer screen they will be removed from the test room, reported immediately to the Home Office for cheating which is sufficient grounds for deportation”. Thanks, just what we all needed. Anyway, I managed to answer enough questions correctly and passed.
\nSo what does<\/b> the test actually test?<\/p>\n


\nWell the questions I was asked, and the sample ones in my book, show that you need to be able to:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. process negation, especially double negation, eg: “The only country in the UK which does not have a representative parliament is Northern Ireland — TRUE\/FALSE”<\/li>\n
  2. understand specialist vocabulary and idioms, eg: “Scottish banknotes circulate as legal tender in England \u2013 TRUE\/FALSE”<\/li>\n
  3. manipulate numbers and do mathematical operations, eg: “What proportion of UK children do not live in two-parent families?” (The study guide book tells you that 65% of children live in two-parent families, 25% in single-parent families, and 10% in step-parent families, so you either have to be able to add<\/b> 25+10 or subtract<\/b> 100-65 to get the correct answer of 35%).<\/li>\n
  4. memorise a bunch of statistics, eg: “What is the distance from Land’s End to John O’Groats?” (see also (3) above)<\/li>\n
  5. memorise a bunch of facts that the test makers think are important, eg: the names and celebration dates of the patron saints of England, Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland, and whether these dates are public holidays or not.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    Whether any of this actually tests what you need to know in order to live here successfully or whether it demonstrates that you have a functional level of English seems rather questionable. I tried out sample questions on a number of UK citizens born in England and none of them could answer correctly.
    \nAustralia, in its usual fashion, has copied Britain (and Canada and the US) and is introducing its own “Australian Citizenship Test” \u2013 you can take a sample     test<\/a> to determine “if you deserve to be an Aussie” by answering questions like “Give three Australian colloquialisms for swimming suit”. At least the UK test doesn’t include questions about slang! The Australian test has apparently brought forth a range of opinions, if this story<\/a> in the Daily Telegraph and the 41 comments it aroused are anything to go by.
    \nHaving passed the test, gone to Birmingham twice for interviews, and parted with \u00a3950 in fees I am now the proud possessor of a permanent resident visa in my passport \u2013 but the best part is I can now prove I speak English proper.
    \nPS. For those who are interested, the question in (1) above is false \u2013 it is England that lacks its own parliament, while question (2) is true, though you sometimes have trouble convincing your local off licence owner that it is.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    One of my prized possessions after having lived in the UK for five years now is a “Pass Notification Letter” which I received on 30th October 2007 when I sat for the Life in the UK Test administered by the Border and Immigration Service of the Home Office. The letter states: Following your test today … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[12],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3640","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general-news"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.paradisec.org.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3640","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.paradisec.org.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.paradisec.org.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.paradisec.org.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.paradisec.org.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3640"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.paradisec.org.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3640\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4545,"href":"https:\/\/www.paradisec.org.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3640\/revisions\/4545"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.paradisec.org.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3640"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.paradisec.org.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3640"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.paradisec.org.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3640"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}