8 most common mistakes in the NAATI CCL examination

With more than 1 year experience of teaching NAATI CCL, I have compiled a list of 8 most common mistakes made by students in the CCL test. I hope being aware of this beforehand helps avoid the mistakes that others did in the CCL exam.

In the NAATI CCL examination the segments can be replayed upon your request. One repetition per dialogue does not attract any penalty; however, each additional request means you lose 1 point out of 45 for that dialogue. Rephrasing and correction also do not cost any marks as long as used appropriately.

However, because of the intensity of the exam, which lasts for only 15-20 minutes, candidates might forget to ask for that ‘1 free repetition’ per dialogue, which may result in poor interpretation and hence less marks. Getting the opportunity to hear a segment twice can be a game changer. So, it’s vital that you don’t forget this by writing a small reminder on the note-taking paper before the exam starts.

Update: The online proctor system now allows candidates to repeat the segment themselves rather than requesting the testing officer

NAATI suggests that we should not interpret immediately after hearing the chime at the end of each segment. However, no information on how long the pause can be has been provided. Just because there isn’t any information regarding this time frame doesn’t mean that you can pause for as long as you want.

I suggest keeping those pauses to less than 5 seconds and you should be fine.

There is a common misunderstanding that since there is, unlike repetitions, no negative marking for rephrasing/corrections, one can do these as many times. But the fact is that NAATI considers excessive self-corrections as one of the contributing factors to fail a candidate.

So, be careful and keep these to minimum unless really required. I suggest less than 3 corrections per dialogue, in general.

Each segment has up to 35 words, and it’s not possible to just memorize it all, especially when it contains numbers, names and technical words. Therefore, note-taking is required and it’s vital for NAATI CCL success. However, it’s not possible to completely write down the whole segment as it is. If you do so, you won’t be able to grasp the summary or the gist of the segment and interpreting becomes

Without understanding the gist and the basic storyline, you can only interpert short segments (10-15 words). For longer segments, it’s crucial that you focus more on conceptualization and only note down the key words and later reconstruct the sentence while interpreting.

We’ve already discussed the indispensable role note-taking plays in the NAATI CCL interpretation examination. Now if you do have plenty of notes but you’re unable to read your own handwriting later, then what use would it be. This actually makes you lose your oral fluency, as you’ll have to pause to be able understand what you wrote.

So, write less but neatly, and well-spaced.

This is one of the most common errors done by beginners of the NAATI CCL test, especially those who are preparing without any guidance

If a test-taker is unable to think of the exact translation of the word in English or their native language while interpreting, then there is a tendency of getting stuck on that word and not moving ahead, even though you have noted down rest of the information. This not only disrupts your oral fluency but also makes you forget rest of the information, and end of the day you lose a lot of marks.

Think about it! You only need 63 out of 90 total and 29/45 in each dialogue to pass. So, it’s OK to make mistakes. In this case, just English to English or LOTE- LOTE (for example: Nepali-Nepali). It’s much better to do this rather than getting stuck on a word. Not interpreting few words won’t make you fail the exam straight away. You’ll get at least the pass marks 63 as long as there is not distortion in meaning and the overall performance is acceptable.

I’ve taught many CCL students and conducted many mock tests online. During this course I’ve witnessed few students interpreting Nepali to Nepali instead of Nepali to English.

Now the reason why this happens is that people find it convenient to take notes in English even for Nepali segments. If you see that your notes are in English, you might accidentally start interpreting back to Nepali while the source segment was in fact in Nepali itself. The testing officer will not give you any warning of this blunder.

But fear not. There is a simple solution to this. Simply write ‘2E’ or ‘2N’ to before noting down each segment to indicate whether you should interpret to English (2E) or to Nepali (2N).

There are many CCL institutes which offer only 10-15 dialogues to students. And most of them only offer dialogues to be practise in the class. No dialogues are given to students to practise at home. This means that you have to attend the institute for a longer time period and pay around $1000. 

We, on the other hand, give more power to you. With online access to around 50+ dialogues with answers, you can practise dialogues anywhere you are using your PC or smart phone. This feature is available in our Gold Kit.

The more you practise, the better the chances of your passing the exam.

If you found this information useful and practical, then please let me know by leaving a review on our Facebook page. Also, please consider joining our Facebook group where you can discuss and share ideas related to CCL.