Try your hand at our Christmas quiz. Topic: Life in the UK!
I took my UK citizenship test earlier this year, it’s safe to say I was excited. Not just for this new chapter in my life but also to dive into these life-changing questions. After all, I’d been immersed in test theory from my work on the Dynamic Placement Test and I was keen to see how these questions stacked up. The answer is that the approach can best be described as… well, eccentric. Here is a small selection of highlights from my preparation.
We’ll start with something easy – history.
1. What was the population of the UK in 2010? (Yes, what was the population 15 years ago before I even started living in the UK?)
Or this niche item.
2. When were films first shown publicly in the UK?
3. Who were the first people to arrive in Britain in what we call the Stone Age?
Now onto medical matters.
4. How long does it take to donate blood? (No, they won’t tell you if it includes waiting time, recovery time, or depending on your personal blood flow rate.)
How about culture?
5. What is the minimum age requirement in the UK to drink wine or beer with a meal provided you are with someone over 18?
6. In which period did British Film studios flourish? (There is apparently an objective answer, not subjective taste.)
7. Pool and darts are traditional pub games. (The heart of British culture, of course.)
Politics mustn’t be forgotten.
8. Royal Ascot is a four-day horse race meeting in Berkshire attended by members of the Royal Family.
And geography.
9. In the UK, most people live in towns and cities and very small parts of Britain are countryside. (Oddly phrased double-barrelled question, of which one part seems to be true and the other false.)
10. When did Britain become permanently separated from the continent by the Channel? (Essential knowledge of how to be a good citizen in the British society of today.)
These are just a sample of the real questions I had to answer in my practice test and in the final thing. I didn’t learn anything especially useful about the UK. Perhaps the purpose of the test isn’t to ensure test takers have a good understanding of life in the UK — but ensuring they care enough about the citizenship application to go to the effort of studying for it? Anyway, I passed!! How did you do…
Answers:
- The population in 2010 was just over 62 million.
- Films were first shown publicly in the UK in 1896.
- The first people to arrive in Britain in the Stone Age were Hunter-gatherers.
- It takes about an hour to give blood.
- You must be 16 years old to drink wine or beer with a meal provided you are with someone over 18.
- British Film studios flourished in the 1930s.
- True. Pool and darts are traditional pub games.
- False. Royal Ascot, a five-day race meeting in Berkshire attended by members of the Royal Family.
- False. Most people live in towns and cities but much of Britain is still countryside.
- Britain become permanently separated from the continent 10,000 years ago.
