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Practice: Dictated sentence: 'America is a free nation.' The applicant writes: 'America is a free nashun.' Is this acceptable?

Reviewed by Jordan Morley, Editorial Lead at 247SimpleTests. Written by the 247SimpleTests Editorial Team from the official source material cited on every question.

Correct answer

Borderline — 'nashun' is a phonetic spelling of 'nation' that might be accepted at the officer's discretion; however, 'nation' is a key civics word and should be spelled correctly — NATION: N-A-T-I-O-N

  1. A Yes — any spelling that sounds similar passes
  2. B Yes — the meaning is clear even with the misspelling
  3. C Borderline — 'nashun' is a phonetic spelling of 'nation' that might be accepted at the officer's discretion; however, 'nation' is a key civics word and should be spelled correctly — NATION: N-A-T-I-O-N
  4. D No — only perfectly spelled sentences pass

Why this is the answer

USCIS spelling standards: 'Nashun' is a phonetic approximation of 'nation' — it shows the applicant heard the word correctly but has a spelling gap. Whether this passes depends on the officer's judgment about whether it demonstrates basic English writing ability.

Recommendation: Learn the correct spelling of key vocabulary words, especially nation (N-A-T-I-O-N), which appears frequently. USCIS writing guidelines note that minor spelling errors may be acceptable, but key civics vocabulary (nation, President, Congress, citizen) should be spelled correctly. When in doubt, practise until spelling is correct — it removes ambiguity from the evaluation.

Source: USCIS Citizenship Writing Test — Spelling Tolerance

Practice more questions

This question is from our US Citizenship Test Practice practice test. Take the full practice test to test your knowledge across all Writing Test Sentences and other topics.

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About this topic: Writing Test Sentences

In the writing test the officer reads a sentence aloud and you must write it so that it has the same meaning; spelling, capitalisation and punctuation errors are tolerated unless they change the meaning. The words come only from the official USCIS writing vocabulary list. This is one of 25 Writing Vocabulary questions on writing test sentences, each with a full explanation on a single study page.

New to this exam? Our Citizenship exam guide explains the format, scoring, and how to prepare.

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