How to Prepare for your Canadian Citizenship Test
Give yourself time: There is a lot of material in the Discover Canada study guide. You will not be able to learn everything in it in a few hours, or even a few days. Give yourself at least a few weeks to prepare for the test. The longer you have to study, the more you will learn, and the more confident you will feel the day of the test.
Find a suitable time and place to study: Find a private, quiet place to study, preferably at a table or desk. Study when you will not be disturbed by children, household noise, or other distractions. Listening to music or trying to watch TV while you study are both very bad ideas.
Obtain a paper or digital copy of Discover Canada: To avoid copyright issues, we have removed the photos that are in the Discover Canada guide from our text explanations. Sometimes, a picture can be very helpful, so we strongly recommend that you get an original copy of the Discover Canada guide so you can look at the photos and graphics. You can access all of the versions that are available at our Download Discover Canada page. OR You can click on the links at the bottom of the Unit pages that say, “Click here to view images from this unit of Discover Canada.” These links will take you to the government web pages where you can view the images online. As well as the pictures, there is some information with these images, so you really need to do this!
Have a notebook available: We have worked very hard to prepare everything you need to pass your citizenship test, but there will probably be ideas or questions that you want to write down. Using a scrap of paper is not a good way to do this. Write all of your study notes and questions (and answers) in a notebook so you can always find everything you have written.
Break up your study sessions: Don’t try to learn everything all at once. Take a short break every hour or so. You’ll remember more information, and studying won’t seem so hard.
Read all of the Discovery Canada guide to begin: There is a lot to learn in the Discover Canada guide. Before you really begin studying, read it from front to back. Some of the ideas that are mentioned very briefly at the beginning are explained more fully later on. If you try to understand everything the first time you read the guide, your progress will be very slow.
Remember to focus on the content: In most books, if something is underlined, that means that that is the important information. On Canadian Citizenship Test Kit, this is not the case. On this website, certain words or phrases are underlined because they need to be explained a bit more. This does not mean that this is the most important information! You still have to read carefully and decide for yourself which information to focus on.
Remember that the level of English will change: The notes that we have written for the units in the “Learn” section should be very easy for everybody – even ESL learners – to understand. The “Review” exercises are a bit more advanced, and the Quizzes in the “Practice” section are more advanced again. The reason for this is that the real Canadian Citizenship test is not written only for ESL learners. By learning the information in Discover Canada in easy English, you will be able to use your knowledge to answer questions just like the questions that will be asked on the real test.
Remember that all of the site is for learning: Some of the quiz questions (or their answers) might seem a bit silly because they have repetitive answers, or because you may get the answer to one question in a quiz from another question in the same quiz. Remember that all parts of this site – even the quizzes – are to help you prepare for the real test. If part of an answer is repeated in every one of the choices for a question, that is to help you remember that that is part of the right answer. The goal of this site is to prepare you for the real test, not to be the real test.
Don’t just look at your quiz scores: Remember that the goal of all parts of this site is to help you learn. If you make a mistake on a practice quizz, check the right answer. If you need to, review that part of the Discover Canada guide again.
We have added Google Translate to this website, but we recommend strongly that you do not use it very often; the less, the better. There are two reasons: 1) Automatic translations are a lot better than they used to be, but there are still a lot of problems with them. They simply don’t work very well. 2) Your test will be in English (or French), so you need to study in English (or French). Google Translation is provided as an optional service, but you use it at your own risk!