My friends keep failing the Life in the UK test – no surprise when the questions are ambiguous, obscure or plain wrong
For more than a year, I’ve been helping two friends with the Life in the UK test, which is a prerequisite for anyone seeking indefinite leave to remain, or naturalisation as a British citizen. They’ve each failed twice since January, Victor took his third test on Saturday.
Immersed in it, still never a week goes by that I’m not astonished and wrongfooted by a question on the practice tests. What, in 2007, did Britons vote the nation’s best view? Which of the following statements is correct: Shakespeare focused mainly on kings, queens and the nobility; Shakespeare was one of the first to portray the lives of ordinary Englishmen and women? (I’d say you could make a case for both, except for that ambiguity – one of the first whats? Writers? What about Chaucer? Anyway, the second was the answer they were looking for.)
