citizenship tests

[winterbadger]

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/article2554235.ece

http://usgovinfo.about.com/blinstst.htm

Uh huh, and whose is harder?

Comments

[sioneva.livejournal.com]

Both are pretty easy. The US one just requires a basic government/civics class and it took me all of a week with the study book to pass the one for the UK with, so far as I know, at least 90%.

[winterbadger]

A lot of the astonishment that greets them seems to come from people who don't get that these are supposed to be tests you study for.

That said, a lot of the information that the UK exam tests you on seems to me to be fairly pointless. Some on the US exam too (who really needs to know why there are 13 stripes?), but more on the UK one. JMO.

[cmlc.livejournal.com]

Hmm - the US one has at least two wrong answers - something about getting independence from England, when England had ceased to be an independent nation several generations before then - and the UK one has at least one - some nonsense about tricks at Halloween, which is an American custom, not a British one.

[winterbadger]

Halloween, which is an American custom, not a British one.

Not according to a lot of my UK correspondents; it seems to be taking hold over there too, at least Dahn Sarf.

[cmlc.livejournal.com]

Really! How depressing :-(

[winterbadger]

Why? Is everything American automatically bad?

(Sorry if that comes off more shirty than I mean it, but I spent all of last week listening to my sailing instructor needling me about how awful Americans are and moaning about how he had to import all the parts for his Catalinas from the US--well, gee, if you'd bought a Hunter or a Cornish Crabber, I guess you wouldn't have that problem. You must have had a reason, eh? Couldn't perhaps be that the US boat was WELL BUILT and a GOOD DEAL, huh? Gah.)

[cmlc.livejournal.com]

Because we had a perfectly good Halloween tradition that was a treasured part of my childhood and it's seemingly been obliterated in favour of blindly copying media-promoted foreign customs.

[winterbadger]

Ah, fair enough. What was it? I wasn't aware that the UK *had* a Halloween tradition.

[cmlc.livejournal.com]

I have no idea about the UK, but Scotland certainly did. It's called guising. I always imagined that the US must have got it from Scotland, but who knows.

I've just looked it up in Wikipedia. They conflate it with the American custom and say it's a 20th century thing. But as far as we knew it had existed for all time... the children all dressed up in fancy dress, went round from house to house (NOT shepherded by adults (pah!), just in a gang by themselves). We'd either get let in to the house, or would all stand on the doorstep; but the deal was that every child had to do something - sing a song, recite a poem, do a magic trick, something like that; and in return the householder would give you a treat. Traditionally you'd get apples and nuts. But it also tended to involve sweets and coins. The best house we ever went to was where the lady lived who made whole trays of home made toffee apples, and you got a toffee apple each... Each child had a bag and the apples and nuts and sweets would be tipped into it to form a big exciting bundle that you'd explore when you got home. Toffee apples disappeared instantly though of course :-)
Similar, I suppose, to this American custom; but far nicer I think because try as I might I cannot like this idea of going round the neighbourhood issuing threats to people!

[winterbadger]

Interesting.

I'd have to do some research to back up a vague impression, but I believe the tradition of going about and extorting "gifts" in return for good wishes/not doing harm is a part of a good many folk traditions. I'm pretty sure that some versions of hunting the wren, for example, involve the wrenboys making not-very-veiled threats about what happens to those who don't "give us a penny to bury the wren". Not saying that US Halloween got it's start from that, just that it's not an exclusively American idea.

[cmlc.livejournal.com]

Yes OK...

[pisica.livejournal.com]

IIRC, American halloween traditions were taken from the Irish immigrants. So you can send blame westward, but not THAT far west.

[winterbadger]

Now you mention it, I think it was one of the Clancys I recall discussing what happened if you didn't pony up a penny for the wrenboys...

[janewilliams20.livejournal.com]

What we used to have, at a similar time of year, was Guy Fawkes Night aka Bonfire Night. A week or so before, you'd make your "guy" - old clothes, stuffed with something flammable. You'd push him around the place, asking for donations: "penny for the guy". (And yes, a penny was about what you expected, and it had better be a good guy with some effort put in.) Then on Bonfire Night, he got burnt on the bonfire. There would also be fireworks, and food cooked on the fire.

Now, the guy has been forgotten, and the bonfire and fireworks have been drowned in Health and Safety.

[winterbadger]

Guy Fawkes I knew about. :-)

Michael Flanders (from his wheelchair): "Nearly November the Fifth, my goodness! Swan pushed me up the road today... we got one and sixpence, all in coppers..."

[peaceful-fox.livejournal.com]

I've just taken the UK test and there is NO mention of Halloween in either the test questions nor any of the study guides I used.

[wolfette]

the Americans got the custom from their Irish ancestors.

Scotland had the tradition of "guising" - children going door to door in costume begging for sweeties, and "doing a party piece" (song, dance, magic trick, joke, etc) when requested in return for their sweeties.

[wcg.livejournal.com]

I'm not sure hard even signifies. Both seem largely trivial. I have no idea what several of the answers to the British version would be, but I imagine I could look them up pretty quickly. The US version is just questions that I had to know the answers to in order to pass 12th grade civics.

[silme.livejournal.com]

Trust me, if you read the study guide for the UK one, you should pass with a 100% grade. It's not that hard. (I skimmed the guidebook twice and took a couple of sample tests. I passed those, and I passed the real one. Ian took the sample tests also and passed.)

Some of the information on the test seems trivial, but some of it is information you pick up living and working here. Information about the education system? That's my job. I had a question on the citizenship test that dealt with driving, and the same question was on the driving theory test.

It really wasn't hard. I swear. Now, if you're struggling with learning the English language, then it's hard. But it should be a breeze for most fluent English speakers. And native English speakers? Not a problem, as long as you read the book.