US Citizenship Reading Test: the Official Word List and 30 Practice Sentences

How the reading test works

At your naturalization interview the USCIS officer gives you up to three sentences and you read them aloud, one at a time, until you read one correctly. One correct sentence is a pass, and the officer then stops the reading test. Per the USCIS Policy Manual, Volume 12, Part E, Chapter 2, you pass if you read one of the three sentences "without extended pauses", in a way that conveys the meaning of the sentence and that the officer is able to understand. You must read every content word. You may leave out short words, and you may make pronunciation or intonation errors, as long as they do not change the meaning. USCIS does not publish the test sentences, but it does publish the words they are made from: the Reading Vocabulary for the Naturalization Test (rev. 08/08), 64 entries in eight categories by our count of the PDF. This page gives you the whole list, 30 practice sentences written by TalkDrill using only those words, the mistakes that fail a sentence and the ones that do not, and a 15-minute routine to get you reading them smoothly.

The rule, line by line

The Policy Manual lists the reasons a single sentence fails. We have set them beside the things that do not fail, so you can see where the line is.

A failed sentence is not a failed test. It only means the officer moves on to the next one. You fail the reading test if you do not read at least one of the three successfully.

The official reading word list, by category

This is the complete list as printed on the USCIS PDF Reading Vocabulary for the Naturalization Test (rev. 08/08), downloaded and checked on 21 October 2026. The same list is available as a plain text file on the USCIS text-only resources page, which is easier to read on a phone or with a screen reader. The USCIS interview and test page says the content of the reading list "focuses on civics and history topics". The right-hand column is our note, not USCIS wording.

Three things stand out when you put the reading list beside the writing list. First, only the reading list has question words (How, What, When, Where, Who, Why), and only the writing list has months and most of the place names. Second, the verb forms differ: the reading list has "elects" and "meet" with "do/does", which fit questions such as "Who elects Congress?" and "Where does Congress meet?", while the writing list has "elect" and "meets", which fit answers such as "Congress meets in Washington, D.C." Third, the reading list uses American spelling ("colors", "Labor Day"). This is our reading of the two PDFs, not a USCIS statement, but it tells you what to practise: reading questions aloud, and writing the answers.

What a pass and a fail sound like

The six examples below were written by TalkDrill to show how the Policy Manual rule applies. They are not recordings of real applicants. The officer makes the decision at the interview; the last column is our reading of the rule.

The pattern is simple. The officer is checking meaning, not accent. So the two habits that matter most are reading every content word and not stopping. If you meet a word you are unsure of, say your best attempt and keep going; a slightly wrong sound in a moving sentence is safer than a long silence.

30 practice sentences in sets of three

Each set has three sentences, like the test. Every word in every sentence is on the official reading list; we checked each one against the PDF. The sentences were written by TalkDrill and are not the sentences used by USCIS. For each one, the middle column lists the words the Policy Manual would treat as content words in our judgement, the ones you must not drop, and the last column names the sound most likely to cause trouble.

How to use them: read a set silently once, then aloud slowly, then aloud at your normal speaking speed. Record the third reading on your phone and listen back. If you stopped anywhere for more than a moment, that word is tomorrow's practice.

Set 1: Presidents

Set 2: George Washington

Set 3: The White House and the capital

Set 4: Congress

Set 5: Citizens

Set 6: Rights and government

Set 7: The flag

Set 8: Holidays

Set 9: More holidays and the largest state

Set 10: People and places

Answer each question aloud after you read it, in a full sentence. "Who lives in the White House? The President lives in the White House." That doubles as speaking practice and civics revision, and the answers are the shape of the dictation sentences on our writing test page. The civics answers themselves are on the 128 civics questions page.

Pronunciation traps by first language

The sounds most likely to trip you are the ones your first language does not separate. The table names the words on the official list where each pattern shows up. These are well-known features of each language's sound system, not statistics about applicants.

TalkDrill has short read-aloud drills for exactly these sounds: v and w, p, f, b and v, voiceless th, short i and long ee and final consonant clusters. Five minutes on the one that matches your language is worth more than an hour of general reading. Our first-language pages go further: Spanish speakers, Hindi, Gujarati and Punjabi speakers, and Tagalog, Vietnamese, Mandarin and Arabic speakers.

A 15-minute daily routine

This is our routine, built around the Policy Manual standard. It takes ten days to cover all 30 sentences once. Plan on two rounds.

1. Minutes 0 to 3: the word list. Read one category of the official list aloud. Mark any word you could not say at once.
2. Minutes 3 to 6: your sound drill. One TalkDrill read-aloud sound drill from the table above, for the sound your language merges.
3. Minutes 6 to 11: one set of three. Silent, slow, normal speed, recorded. Listen back and check two things only: was every content word there, and did you stop anywhere?
4. Minutes 11 to 13: answer aloud. Answer each of the three questions in a full sentence. This is the same skill the officer is judging all through the interview.
5. Minutes 13 to 15: one dictation. Ask someone to read you the matching sentence from the writing page and write it down.

Once a week, put the reading into the whole interview. The N-400 interview questions page has a 15-minute mock with a reading step, and the TalkDrill AI mock interview asks a question, listens and follows up, which is the conversation part of the day. The eight-week roadmap tells you when to do each part.

Exemptions, retests and what comes next

Who does not take it. The Policy Manual exceptions table marks three groups as exempt from the English test, reading included, based on age and years as a permanent resident at the time of filing: 50 or older with 20 years (50/20), 55 or older with 15 years (55/15), and 65 or older with 20 years (65/20). All three still take a civics test, in the language of their choice with an interpreter; the 65/20 group gets a shorter test from 20 specially marked questions. The USCIS Exceptions and Accommodations page adds that if you take the civics test in your own language you must bring an interpreter who is fluent in English and that language. A Form N-648 medical certification can exempt you from English, civics or both. Details are on our exemptions page.

If a sentence goes wrong. Stay calm and read the next one. You need one of three.

If you fail all three. Per the USCIS interview and test page, you are retested on the portion you failed between 60 and 90 days after your first interview. The Policy Manual gives the example of an applicant who passed speaking, reading and civics but failed writing: only the writing test is given again. The same applies to reading. The retest uses different test forms, so memorising sentences from your first interview does not help; knowing the word list does. Our results and retest page explains the rest of the process.

The official sources for this page. The reading vocabulary PDF (rev. 08/08); the Policy Manual chapter on English and civics testing (current as of 2 October 2026); the Naturalization Interview and Test page (last reviewed 31 October 2025); the Exceptions and Accommodations page (last reviewed 9 January 2026). All four were read on 21 October 2026. If any of them changes, the official page wins over this one.