An Autopsy of the Federal Oral Exam, Part 2: How to Study Smarter

Preparing for the federal oral exam can seem very daunting. With the pass rate in the single digits, it can intimidate even the best state court interpreters. We have to accept the fact that there is a significant difference between what the federal and state examiners demand of their candidates.

That being said, there are some great materials out there that will help you prepare for the exam. Before moving on to those in my next post, I want to talk about what I believe makes preparing for the federal oral exam so difficult for individuals making the transition from state court. Then, I want to share my study tips.

Please keep in mind that I am sharing what worked for me. If something here doesn’t work for you, then don’t do it. There’s more than one way to approach this, so do not limit yourself to my recommendations.

First, let’s talk about what I believe makes this examination so difficult.

General, Non-Legal Vocabulary

I’m sure some of you who have not taken the exam are rolling your eyes at this, but trust me. This is what gets most people on the exam. This is a court exam. We use a lot of the terminology already on a daily basis in our work. However, there is a vast amount of words and expressions in both English and Spanish that we simply don’t encounter regularly, but are common knowledge in the US and Latin America.

For example, how well do you know your geography terms? Once you leave the realm of continent, country, and city, do you know how to say lowlands? Unincorporated territory? Plateau? Tectonic plants? Moderate temperate climate?

What about animals? We all know how to say bird, but do you know how to say swallow, finch, or raven? How about housing terms? How do you differentiate between a shack with a dirt floor, a makeshift refuge, a slum, and a ghetto? 

And what about clothing? We all know how to say “hat”, but what about top hat, beanie, cowboy hat, or newspaper boy cap? (Note: None of these terms reflect what I encountered in the oral exam.)

This type of term, not a court term, is most likely to trip you up on the exam. They are peppered everywhere on the exam, not just in the expert witness exercise.

This is especially true for us native English speakers. We have the disadvantage of Spanish being our second language and living in an English-dominant country. We may know what a buzzard is, but not the Spanish equivalent. For Spanish speakers in the US, you may have forgotten some words from lack of use, triggering “tip-of-the-tongue” phenomenon.

The good news is that in preparing for the written exam, you’ve already expanded and refreshed your general knowledge. In my opinion, this is work you need to keep doing alongside your court interpreting exercises to diminish the likelihood that you’ll encounter an unknown term.

Federal Court Vocabulary versus State Court Vocabulary

While there is a lot of overlap between the two, there are differences between state and federal court vocabulary because they are two different systems that cover different crimes. The actors and departments are also slightly different. The good news is that the federal system is uniform across all 50 states, as are the federal agencies. You can learn the official names and the Spanish equivalents of Federal offenses without worrying about variations that could affect your interpreting choices.

It is important to be aware of these differences and study the appropriate terminology. Do not to get bogged down in learning terms that will only pop up in state court, because they’re not going to come up on the exam. At one point my team got caught up arguing over how to interpret petty theft, bringing up all of the different ways it’s classified in our states, until someone pointed out that this wasn’t super helpful because it’s not a federal charge that will pop up on the exam. In the federal courtroom? Maybe, if it’s listed as a past charge on a PSI. But otherwise, we were wasting time discussing something that was not going to be tested.

Don’t let this happen to you.

Developing Interpretation Strategies

Having gone through exam prep, the biggest lesson I took away is that part of our studying needs to focus on interpretation strategies. We already know two realities about this exam.

  1. Every candidate will encounter an unknown term or a term whose immediate equivalent is not known.
  2. No candidate will have access to dictionaries/glossaries or be able to pause the exam.

A lot of people are prone to panicking when the inevitable happens, which compromises how they perform on the rest of the exam. Yet, people don’t address how to reduce the probability of panic.

This is why part of your prep has to focus on what you will do to problem solve around an unknown term. You want to have a lot of different options in your interpreting toolbelt so that your confidence can stay up and you can keep going. Whether it’s finding a synonym, making an educated guess, keep the term in the original language, or skipping it all together, practice using this toolbelt.

The best way I found to do this? Always do a dry-run of each interpretation exercise, record it, and listen to how you do. We’re going in to the exam blind and will not have time to perfect our renditions, so replicate this scenario in your practice! This first go at an exercise is not about knowing the terminology perfectly or doing the most beautiful sounding rendition. It’s about practicing keeping your cool and developing your resourcefulness as an interpreter. As you strengthen these skills, it will reflect in your renditions because they’ll sound smoother and more cohesive. (More on this below.)

Speaking of which…

It’s Not All About the Scoring Units

Something I noted in interacting with other FCICE candidates is that so many of them got so bogged down in what could be potential scoring units and how to say a term “perfectly” and “correctly” that they completely neglected the fact that there is a holistic evaluation. As a result, they were missing out on a lot of great strategies and advice being given at different seminars and workshops.

Scoring units are incredibly important. However, our interpretations have to sound smooth, professional, and complete. We want our recordings to sound natural in the target language. When you’re doing an exercise and evaluating your recordings, don’t forget to factor in what the examiners will be taking into consideration in the holistic evaluation. Read the manual again to refresh yourself on the holistic and don’t forget it! It could be detrimental if you do.

With all of this in mind, what study tips can I give to help you study smarter?

1. Keep incorporating general, non-legal vocabulary into your studying. There are several different ways to incorporate this into your studying, such as: 

  • Reading from different sections of newspapers to pull vocabulary. Don’t just stick to the politics and legal sections! Take a look at arts & culture, science, etc.
  • Interpreting non-legal TED talks on YouTube
  • Reading books and short stories.
  • Actively listening to podcasts that cover a variety of subjects. For those who are English dominant like me, I highly recommend listening to The Washington Post’s Spanish language news podcast (“El Washington Post”).

Come up with different vocabulary categories with your study group. Make Quizlet sets for these words and study them alongside your legal and expert witness vocabulary with the caveat that it is impossible to study every single word out there. Don’t get overwhelmed by the fact that you didn’t have a chance to go over all of the names of chemicals and elements, musical instruments, or aquatic mammals. This is just meant to expand what you know since the exam also tests the limits of your general knowledge.

2. Start studying shortly after the written exam. This is a call back to my first post. A year may seem like a long time, but it will fly by quickly. After passing the written exam, I would start oral prep by going back to the basics and revisiting the materials you used to prep for the state exam. For my study group, this was ACEBO Edge. This will help you build a study habit, revisit terms you don’t get to see regularly, and start analyzing where you need to clean up your interpreting skills. 

Once the date of the oral exam is getting closer and the FCICE seminars and materials are being offered, you’ll have done important warmup work that will make the switch to harder materials more seamless.

3. Build a study schedule. A study schedule won’t just keep you accountable. Sure, it will help you plan out your studying ahead of time, but it will also give you a realistic perspective on how much time you’re dedicating to each mode of interpretation and terminology.

It’s important to have this information in hand, because you will reach a point where you won’t need to divide your time equally among the different modes. For example, by the time I was six weeks out from the exam, I was a beast at the consecutive exercises. However, I still needed a lot of work on my fast simultaneous and finishing my sight translations within the 5-minute time limit. I adjusted my schedule and dedicated less time to consecutive.

4. Do not skimp on shadowing, memory, chunking, and paraphrasing exercises. The basics are incredibly important. The greatest athletes revisit the basics in order to be in the best shape for competition. We also need to revisit these basics! These exercises are crucial to helping you keep your cool and build the problem-solving skills the examiners will be evaluating in your renditions.

5. About Note-Taking… Note-taking is an important skill for long consecutive. However, I think people preparing for this test make two mistakes. First, some try to change or adopt a note-taking technique way too close to the exam date. When I was learning note-taking, it slowed me down a lot. It wasn’t until after over a month of practice that note-taking started working for me instead of against me. If you’re thinking about learning or changing note-taking technique, do this well in advance of the oral exam. If you’re only a few months out, wait until after the exam to do this.

Second, people forget that an important part of doing consecutive is developing your listening skills. When prepping for consecutive, in my exercises I started challenging myself to take the least number of notes possible and push my memory retention. This allowed me to be more judicious in my note-taking strategy. This is something you can do without slowing down your consecutive abilities.

6. Take Breaks. This one may sound obvious, but it needs to be said. When I first started working on the harder exercises, I would reach a point of frustration where I was not improving and my study time became less productive. Recognize when you’ve reached this point, put down the books, and step away. If you keep going, you’ll only get more frustrated. Whenever this happened to me, I would set the interpreting exercise aside for 24 hours and work on vocabulary for the rest of my study time. The next day, I found that when I revisited the exercise, I could do it without that same level of frustration. Be kind to yourself and step away when needed. If not, failing to get an exercise right multiple times will begin to affect your confidence.

7. Do each exercise at least three times, each with a different intention. Remember, in the federal exam we’re being evaluated on scoring units and holistically. It’s important to study in a way that will address both of these aspects of the evaluation. Each time I did an exercise, I did it with a different intention. Round One was my “cold” rendition of the exercise. The focus here is NOT on doing a perfect interpretation or making all of the right word choices. Here, the focus is building problem-solving skills and seeing if you can still produce a good, coherent interpretation even when encountering unknown terminology, long renditions, and complex grammatical restructuring. After evaluating this rendition, you can go back and look at what terminology you need to study and develop a strategy for sentence restructuring. After studying this, do Round Two, which is where you can evaluate yourself for scoring units, in addition to the holistic aspects. After additional study, do Round Three to perfect it and get a final evaluation.

8. Test your retention by repeating a challenging exercise a day or two later. This is a technique that helped me pinpoint which areas of vocab and technique I still needed to work on. After doing and perfecting my rendition on an exercise, I would go back and repeat it after one or two days had passed. While not a totally “blind” exercise, enough time had passed that allowed me to see which terms had stuck, which ones I still needed to study, and if I needed to improve any problem-solving techniques to make my interpretation flow more smoothly.

9. Put aside your pride and make peace with the legal terms the AOC examiners will accept. For this exam, if a legal term is in an accepted authoritative text, it will be accepted by the examiners. It could very well be that you’ve been using another term not found in these texts and you feel frustrated that what you believe is correct isn’t accepted by examiners. I understand this, but the federal exam is not the place to make a point or fight about this. I also want to emphasize that you should not have this fight at prep seminars. The only thing that will end up happening is time will be wasted and your other colleagues attending the course will be mad that this ate into valuable class time. If you’re given acceptable terms, make your peace, study them, and move on. After you’ve gotten your federal certification and are invited to be an examiner, you can have this discussion to try and get your term added to the list.

10. Share your renditions with your team members. It’s so important to get feedback from your group members. They will notice both positives and negatives in your interpretations that will help you get a more honest picture of your skills. They will also help you figure out how to make linguistic choices to eliminate any awkwardness in your interpretations.

Ultimately, what matters is the attitude that you bring to exam prep. Like in our real work, we need to balance a healthy dose of humility with confidence in our abilities. If you’ve already achieved state court certification and have been keeping up with your continuing education, you’re already a good interpreter with strong abilities. However, the federal exam is asking you to push past what you have, grow into a great interpreter, and reach a higher aptitude. Therefore, you have to acknowledge that while you do know something, you don’t know everything. Your study group partners and materials are offering opportunities and resources to learn something new and reach the level the examiners are seeking.

Welcome the growing pains instead of fighting against them. After all, if you refuse to budge on the basis that you’re already a good state court interpreter, you’ll remain a good state court interpreter. But you won’t grow into a great federal court candidate.

In part three, I’ll present and evaluate the prep materials I used to study.

Read Part 3 here.

An Autopsy of the Federal Oral Exam, Part 1: Myth Busting, Preparing to Study, and a Winning Mentality

A few weeks ago, I took the Federal Oral Exam for the first time. This exam cycle has been a roller coaster of uncertainty and anxiety, following the 2017 debacle. I won’t know what my results are until a few more weeks, but what I can tell you is that I walked out of that exam proud of my performance. I do not know if that feeling will translate to a passing score. I still have my reservations about that. But I came out on the other side feeling more positive about being able to achieve federal certification.

Much like I did with the written exam, after a few weeks of digestion and reflection, I want to share my thoughts on my experience with the oral exam. Having gone through it once, I feel like much of the mystery surrounding the exam has been lifted and it is no longer this legendary, invincible monster. It is only fair to share this with my colleagues in the hopes that I can inspire them to put in the work towards federal certification.

Before I delve in, I want to be very clear about what I will not be doing:

First, I will NOT be giving a detailed account of my exam content. That goes explicitly against the oath that test takers sign and I will not break it. I’ve seen people sharing this information openly in forums and, quite frankly, I am shocked they have the audacity to do so. Additionally, I firmly believe that it won’t be of any help to give you those specifics. After all, the version given in 2021 will be different. That is not what you need to know in order to prepare to become a federal court interpreter. Remember, this is not just about passing the exam. It’s about making sure you’re ready to work in federal court.

Second, I will NOT be divulging information or materials that were shared with me in the different prep courses that I decided to take. That intellectual property belongs to my colleagues and I am not about to pass along their hard work freely to others. They’ve put in a tremendous effort in preparing their materials, and I will not disrespect nor devalue them. 

What I am sharing are my own personal lessons and conclusions. In a future post, I will also share my own evaluation of the materials and seminars I used to help you decide where you want to invest your time and resources.

Lastly, this will not be a forum where I try to play the blame game and complain about how unfair the AOC or the examiners are. I have no patience for pity parties. They won’t get you a passing score or do you any good, so best to break that habit right now. I truly believe that, administrative issues aside, the ability to pass this exam falls squarely on our shoulders. What I will do is provide reflections on what the AOC did right, where they still need to improve, and possible changes to consider for future examinations.

Now that we’ve cleared this up, let’s dive into the oral exam.

In this first post, I want to focus on putting a lot of the rumors about this exam to rest and set the right mentality for going into this exam. Whenever there’s an unknown, there’s a great fear of that unknown. I am here to try and dispel that fear for you.

1. Myth Buster 1: This Exam is Doable

Do not adjust your computer screens. No, that is not a typo. This exam is a lot of things. It is the toughest licensing examination I have ever taken. (Yup, it’s tougher than the New York Bar Exam, and I passed that sucker.) It is incredibly demanding. It is one of the hardest interpretation exams in the United States. And it was a pain in my ass from June to December of this year.

However…

It is 100% possible to pass this examination. The Bar Exam, like other exams, is teachable. One of the reasons I believe the FCICE Oral is tough is because it is not a teachable exam. You cannot learn how to “beat the test”, like you can with the bar or with standardized tests like the SAT. You either have or have not developed your interpreting and language abilities enough to pass it. The good news is that you can put in the work to reach the aptitude to pass this exam.

There is no mysterious formula. You cannot bribe your way in. This is a profession where we do very sensitive work. The barrier is present and high, but it serves an important purpose. This is not an exam built to validate professional snobbery. No one is hiding the ball or setting an impossible standard. Granted, they can’t lower the standard to let anyone in just for giving it the old college try. This is an exam to determine who is ready to work in federal court, so it must be difficult but passable.

I could get a failing grade in a few weeks and I will still firmly believe and affirm that this exam is fair and doable. [2020 Update: I did not pass on my first try and I still stand by this.]

2. Myth Buster 2: The Examiners are NOT trying to fail you

Yet again, do not adjust your screens. The examiners are NOT. TRYING. TO. FAIL. US. I think this sentiment comes from the very real perception that within our profession, there are certain seasoned interpreters who are not willing to be open with those aspiring to professional interpretation. Having said that, I believe that the examiners are not going into this with the goal of trying to fail as many candidates as possible.

The reality is that their recommendation will tell the US government and the public at large who they deem to be ready to work in federal court. It is a heavy burden and responsibility, especially in a profession where, literally, one word makes or breaks someone’s life. The standard they are setting is high and they cannot (and should not) compromise it. I don’t blame them. I don’t want someone telling me I’m ready to work in federal court when the fact of the matter is that I am not. 

With the baby boomer generation getting ready to retire and there not being enough new federal interpreters to replace the old guard, there is an incentive to try to find as many great candidates who meet the criteria as possible. It is nonsensical to think that the examiners want to keep new interpreters out.

You need to get it out of your heads that the examiners get some kind of sadistic pleasure from tearing apart interpreters before you can start preparing for this exam in earnest. They will be very tough, but fair.

3. There is no shortcut or miracle solution to preparing for this exam

The way to successfully prepare for the federal exam? Putting in a lot of time into studying vocabulary and polishing interpretation technique over several months.

That’s it. I have no magical shortcut for you. It’s just a lot of hard work and hours of studying.

There is no magical test taking technique, like the SAT or the GRE. There’s just you, your knowledge, and your interpreting abilities.

Having said that, there are wrong ways and smarter ways to prepare for this exam and I will offer my thoughts on how you can use your prep time wisely, including my thoughts on what I wish I had done differently and will do in the event that I have to take it again in 2021.

4. Team Work is Key

I would not have survived this exam without my study group. I love my FCICE war buddies dearly and am so grateful to them for putting up with my neuroses. Here are a few reasons a study group is key to keeping your sanity:

A. Accountability: A study group will help set the pace of studying and keep you on schedule. You’ll be accountable, not just to yourself, but to the group. Our fearless leader set up an intensive study schedule and cracked the whip when needed. When you’re a few months out from test day, you’ll want to make excuses to avoid studying. You’ll be thankful for the earlier work you put in when the exam is a month away and you’re not stuck cramming for everything at the last minute.

B. Modifying Your Study Schedule: Working with others, you’ll be able to adapt your studying strategy as you go to study smarter. Trust me, how you study and your focus will evolve alongside your abilities.

C. Pooling Sources: With your study group, you can pool many resources. I’m not just talking about glossaries. Your group members will also be a great resource, especially if you make sure to have a balance of Spanish and English dominant members. Hearing someone interpret into their native language is immensely helpful. They’ll also give you important feedback on your renditions and catch things you missed in your self-evaluations. Additionally, group members serve as an important sound board whenever you’re working through a tricky exercise or are trying to find the best way to interpret an idea.

D. Divide and conquer: A big part of preparation for the federal oral exam is building legal and general glossaries. It goes much faster and is way more productive when you have four or five people working on these sets.

E. Administrative Snafus: Unfortunately, the 2019 oral exam was not free of administrative problems. During these times, it was great having people I could immediately contact to see if they were facing the same issues, keep my cool, and strategize on how to deal with the situation. Sometimes, you also just need to vent out your frustrations. Who better to do this with than with colleagues going through the exact same thing?

F. Your Biggest Cheerleaders: A significant part of succeeding on any examination is moral support. With an exam as notorious as this one, it can be easy to get down on yourself and let nerves get the best of you. Your group members will be your biggest cheerleaders going into the exam. It also means more because they are fellow colleagues who understand just how much preparation goes into this and how important this exam is for us. As much as our spouses, family, and friends may be reassuring and supportive, they’re not going through this experience. It means so much more when fellow interpreters who have been with you and seen you improve affirm this progress.

Added bonus: you’ll end up with some lifelong friends. My group members came from all over the country (thanks technology!) and they are now some of my most loved colleagues. The bond between us runs so deep that I truly feel like we’re family. This was especially touching for me, as I’m in a part of the country where professional interpreters are scarce and it can get a little lonely.

5. Be prepared to cut back on work and carve out real study time.

I’m going to be blunt. From the moment you receive your passing score on the written or your failing score on the oral, preparing for the next oral exam will be your part time job. You can absolutely still work while you prepare for the exam. However, from personal experience, you’re going to reach a point in which you have to cut back on work, in addition to social and family engagements, in order to truly dedicate yourself to the prep work this exam demands.

This is not unusual for most professional exams. Look at the bar exam. When you graduate law school in the United States, you normally do not start working until after the bar exam is over. It is two and a half months dedicated to full time studying for this exam. Employers take this into account, because they know that it is much more difficult to pass the bar if you’re trying to work at the same time. They want their new recruits to be licensed as quickly as possible, so they make sure their start dates are in September to give them that room. If someone does not pass the first time around, these lawyers will be put on a part-time schedule or given a sabbatical to prepare for the February exams.

We are professionals. Treat this like the bar or medical board exams. I was working full time through mid-October. During that time, I would study for one to two hours a day. However, once I was six weeks out, I limited my work to no more than 20 hours a week. Typically, I would work either in the morning or afternoon and dedicate the other half to studying. Other times, I would work a three-day week, where I would study for an hour those days and dedicate my full time to studying during the other two work days. On weekends, I would be at the library for at least 3 hours a day.

My advice is to plan ahead of time with your employers, clients, and families. Set aside this time on your calendar in advanced (and any necessary monetary savings) so you’re not scrambling to make it work at the last minute.

Having said that, it is incredibly important to set aside down time to put interpreting aside and decompress. Whether it’s gardening, yoga, your kids, or the latest TV show, dedicate an hour or two to it a day. Even though I cut off social engagements the month before the exam, I still made sure to exercise six days a week. It was an hour and half I would have almost every day to just put on some music, an Audible book, or a podcast and rest my brain. Those 90 minutes were crucial to having successful study sessions.

6. The goal is not perfection, it’s excellence

There is no such thing as a perfect interpreter. The examiners are not looking for perfect interpreters. If they were, we’d need to get 100% of the scoring units and a perfect evaluation on the holistic to pass. No one would be federally certified with that standard.

However, you have to be an excellent court interpreter and show the aptitude to become the best of the best. It’s okay to make mistakes in your exercises and on exam day. This is a timed and controlled setting where we do not have the resources at our disposal to render a perfect interpretation. In an exam, we can’t ask for the court’s indulgence. We can’t look something up in Becerra, Tomasi, or a bilingual dictionary. We’re limited to two repetitions on the consecutive. We don’t have our interpreting team member there to act as support. Mistakes will happen. You need to accept, right this moment, that you will not know everything presented. Everyone who is federally certified messed up somewhere on this exam. Give yourself that permission to make mistakes.

A “perfect” standard, especially here, is the enemy of the good. Leave perfect behind. Instead, focus on being the best interpreter you can be.

In my next post, I’ll get into the nitty gritty of exam prep and materials.

Read Part 2 here.

An Autopsy of the Written FCICE, Part 3: Study Mode

We’re now in the Spring of the Written Exam cycle, about three months out from the testing window. You’ve already got your FICE mindset in place and have done all your language skills building over the past nine months. Now, it’s finally time to get down to business and prepare for the examination.

This is where standardized and aptitude testing skills come into play. If you were born on or after 1980 and raised in the US, congratulations on being a millennial. We haven’t had the best hand dealt to us and are constantly berated in the press as entitled children (even though the older millennials are pushing 40…), but here’s where being a US millennial is to your advantage. For better or worse, we are the generation that had standardized testing drilled into us since kindergarten. Without getting into the merits debate on testing, we’re the generation that knows exactly what test prep mode means: knowing what the examiners want, studying smart around their goals, and being able to do it in a timed testing environment.

If tests send you into a panic, don’t worry! This exam, unlike the SAT, is still 80% knowledge, 20% test taking skills. You already spent 9 months focusing on the knowledge part. The test taking part is extremely teachable. Your goal from now until the testing window is to hone in the skills that will make you feel confident when you walk into your test.

Note: If you deal with crippling testing anxiety, especially with aptitude testing, I highly recommend seeking mental health services well before the exam to work with a professional on cognitive strategies and medication to overcome this anxiety.

From my experience with the Written FCICE, here’s what you need to know:

Continue reading “An Autopsy of the Written FCICE, Part 3: Study Mode” →

An Autopsy of the Written FCICE, Part 2: The Language Learning Legwork

(Or Why Federally Certified Interpreters Always Tell You to Read, Read, Read)

Previously, we discussed and determined that Written FCICE Candidates will need roughly one year to prepare for the exam. If you haven’t read that post, start there and then come back to this discussion. Now, we’ll start diving into the substantive work candidates will need to do.

In order to understand my recommendations, it’s important to know what the FCICE Written Exam is testing. The FCICE wants to evaluate candidates’ bilingualism and language comprehension to ensure that only those with the highest proficiency and true bilingualism make it through to the oral exam. This differs from most state written exams, whose language components only evaluate high school graduate level English. We have to have true bilingualism under our belts in order to learn the material and skills being tested on the oral exam.

As interpreters, even as interpreters who have achieved state court certification, we need to come to terms with the fact that having the ability speak Spanish and English fluently is not the marker of true bilingualism. Language is not solely an oral tradition and spoken communication is not the only component. We must be proficient in our ability to write, read, and truly comprehend our second language. Think of all of the factors that inform and shape language.

This is why Federally Certified Interpreters are always telling you to read, read, READ. Of course, I don’t think it’s as simple as devouring a bunch of the most influential novels in both languages. But the point that they’re making is that we as interpreters need to have as much exposure as possible to what shapes language. Unless you’re someone going into this with a PhD in your second language, each candidate will have shortcomings they will need to work on, including in their mother tongue, to get to the level of bilingualism that the AOC demands of its interpreters.

As I go into a deeper discussion of how to tackle your shortcomings, it’s only fair to reveal my own, as my own language background affects the tips and strategies that I will be offering.

Quickly, here’s my background:

  • I was born in Lima, Peru into a highly educated family. My parents immigrated to the US when I was a toddler, and I grew up and received my entire education in the US. I am what we in the US call a “native speaker”.
  • My parents kept Spanish in the home and I was taught to read and write in Spanish before starting kindergarten and I was sent to Peru each summer to spend time with my extended family and be exposed to Spanish. However, once I was in school I did not resume formal Spanish education until high school, where I completed Spanish III and AP Spanish.
  • In college, one of my majors was Spanish. As a part of my major, I took advanced grammar, literature, phonetics and history classes and studied abroad in Spain. My college education was heavy on peninsular literature and cultural content.
  • I have a law degree from the United States and had internship opportunities abroad and with the US Latino community.
  • I completed a Graduate Certificate in Translation at Georgia State University in both Spanish > English and English > Spanish translation.

From my background and the scores I shared in my last post, my tips will be from the perspective of someone whose A language is English, but who has had the opportunity to strengthen her Spanish B language. If your situation is flipped, you will still be able to benefit from what I share. But you may want to talk to federally certified colleagues whose A language is Spanish for more insight.

Now, let’s break down what you’ll need to work in these coming months.

Continue reading “An Autopsy of the Written FCICE, Part 2: The Language Learning Legwork” →

An Autopsy of the Written FCICE, Part 1: The Mindset You Need

I wanted my first post on here to be an introduction to my blog, but given that the latest testing window for the Written FCICE just closed, this topic takes priority.

Three years after passing the state court interpreter’s exam in Alabama, I decided to take the first step in becoming a Federally Certified Court Interpreter. I’m happy to report that on Memorial Day I was able to pass the written exam on my first try, scoring a 92% on the English portion and an 80% on the Spanish. Despite a familiar exam format (this exam is essentially a bilingual GRE with a legal focus), I learned a lot about how to best prepare for this test. Outside of the exam manual, there isn’t a lot out there to guide prospective candidates on what they should anticipate and the timeline they’re looking at during a regular exam cycle.

I’m an attorney by training, which means that the instinct to dissect what went right and wrong, what methods worked, and where improvements can be made is deeply engrained in me. I want to offer any future candidates and colleagues my reflections as a way to help them prepare to study for this test. It’s not as simple as registering six weeks before your test date and using that time to cram. This is not the state exam; we’re in a different league.

This topic will be divided into three parts. In this first part, I will talk about something that is not really touched on in the forums or in the test prep courses offered by exam coaches: the mindset and realistic test prep timeline a candidate will need.

Part Two, which I will post separately, will look at what candidates need to do to make sure that their language abilities are at the level necessary to pursue federal certification.

Part Three will go into the materials and strategies candidates can employ in those last three months before the testing window to ensure that they can tackle the exam.

Continue reading “An Autopsy of the Written FCICE, Part 1: The Mindset You Need” →