Full practice test
The real recruitment test is 85 questions in about an hour, and the listening section is where most candidates lose points. This practice test works the same way: a clock, no feedback until the end, and audio in the accents you actually hear on board. The seven sections and their weights, pronunciation among them, are our own set, not a copy of anyone’s paper. Every question is ours. Not affiliated with any test provider.
What you are about to sit
| Section | Questions | What it checks |
|---|---|---|
| Listening | 20 | Radio calls, announcements, instructions, numbers. Each clip plays twice at most. |
| Pronunciation | 5 | Which did you hear: fifteen or fifty, ship or sheep, port or pot |
| Grammar | 25 | Tenses, modals, prepositions, sentence structure |
| Vocabulary | 15 | Ship, deck, engine and safety words |
| Time & numbers | 8 | Times, dates, figures as they are said at sea; half of them dictated by audio, you type what you heard |
| Safety & SMCP | 5 | Standard phrases and safety language |
| Reading | 2 texts | Notices, emails and procedures, 3 to 4 questions each |
60 minutes on the clock. About 85 questions in total. Use headphones for the listening section. You can answer with keys 1 to 4.
Sailing soon? The listening section needs the recordings. Save them on your phone before you lose the signal: the whole test then works at sea.
Thresholds are set by each employer and vary by company, flag and rank; the bands above are what manning agencies commonly quote. The real test has no time limit but recommends about an hour; here the clock is on so you learn to pace yourself. Your result stays in your browser only. Going to sea? Save the test and the recordings on your phone first.
Your result
How to use this test
- Sit it once cold, without preparation, to see where you stand. Then work on the weakest section and sit it again in a week: the questions are drawn from a bank, so every sitting is different.
- Listening: in the real test you normally hear each recording once or twice. Train with two plays first, then try to answer after one.
- Do not memorise answers. The recruitment test has a different bank; what carries over is the skill, not the question.
- Weak on radio calls? Drill the SMCP Trainer and the VHF module. Weak on numbers? Read the SMCP basics guide on how figures are spoken at sea.