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Citizenship reading and writing practice: USCIS’s words, one at a time

The U.S. citizenship test has an English part: you read one sentence out loud, and you write one sentence. USCIS publishes the words to study for each: 64 for reading and 75 for writing. This page has both lists, word for word. See a word and read it out loud, or hear a word and write it, one at a time, with no clock. No sign-up, and nothing you do here is sent anywhere.

Private by design. This page does not ask who you are, where you were born or what your status is. The one box on it is for typing a word from the list; what you type stays in that box, is not kept, and is gone at the next word. It keeps nothing on this device and sends nothing. It never asks for your microphone. This page runs no analytics or tracking. How we handle privacy.

Good to know

The reading and writing tests

Reading: USCIS says you must read out loud 1 of 3 sentences correctly, to show that you can read in English.
Writing: USCIS says you must write 1 out of 3 sentences correctly, to show that you can write in English.
Speaking is the third part of the English test. USCIS says an officer determines it during the interview about your Form N-400.
This is what USCIS’s “Study for the Test” page said when it was read for this page on October 13, 2026.

What is on the two lists

The reading list has 64 entries in eight groups: people, civics, places, holidays, question words, verbs, and two groups USCIS calls “other”.
The writing list has 75 entries in eight groups: people, civics, places, months, holidays, verbs, and the same two “other” groups.
Some entries hold more than one form, such as “have/has” or “is/was/be”. This page practices each form by itself.
Two entries are numbers written two ways: “fifty/50” and “one hundred/100”. On this page, typing either way counts as the same as the list.
The group names stay in English and in capitals, the way USCIS prints them.

Words, not sentences

The test uses sentences. USCIS’s lists are words, and so is this page. It makes up no sentences, because a sentence written by us would not be USCIS’s.
A way to go further with someone you trust: they make a short sentence from the words on the list and say it, and you write it; then you swap.
USCIS has its own free study resources on its “Study for the Test” page, linked below.

Where every word comes from

Reading Vocabulary for the Naturalization Test, a PDF on uscis.gov marked rev. 08/08.
Writing Vocabulary for the Naturalization Test, a PDF on uscis.gov marked rev. 08/08.
Citizenship Resources in Text-Only Format on uscis.gov: the same two lists as plain text, marked rev. 07/14, for screen readers and Braille displays.
Study for the Test on uscis.gov.
All four files were fetched on October 13, 2026. A program took the words and their groups out of the text lists and checks, each time this page is built, that every word is also in USCIS’s PDF, that the PDF holds no other word, and that the counts are 64 and 75. No word was typed or changed by us.
USCIS can change its lists. If this page and uscis.gov ever differ, uscis.gov is right, and we would like to know.

What this page can’t do

It cannot hear you, so it cannot tell whether you read a word correctly. You mark that yourself.
It cannot see handwriting. If you write on paper here, you compare it with the word yourself.
When you type, it compares letters and nothing else. It tells you whether what you typed is the same as USCIS’s list. It does not know what an officer accepts, and it says nothing about that.
“Hear the word” uses your device’s own voice, in English. It will not sound like a person, some devices have no voice, and a single short word such as “a” or “U.S.” may come out oddly. The AI that wrote this page cannot hear, so nobody has listened to it yet.
It is not the test, and not USCIS. Scarlet Beast is not part of the government and has no tie to USCIS. Doing well here promises nothing about an interview. It is not legal advice.
It keeps nothing. Close the page and the count is gone.
It was tried by a program in one browser, with a mouse and a keyboard. It has not been tried on a touch screen or with a screen reader.

Pages that go with this

Citizenship test practice: the civics questions, every one from USCIS’s two lists.
Immigration help: how to find real, low-cost legal help, and how to spot someone who is not allowed to give it.
Flash cards: make your own cards.
Read it my way: paste any text and have it shown larger or read aloud.
Typing practice: if the keyboard itself is new.
All the free tools, and how to save them on your phone.

Practice, and nothing more. This page shows USCIS’s public word lists and counts what you mark. It is not legal advice and it is not from the government. For advice about your own case, an attorney or a representative accredited by the Department of Justice is the person to ask; Immigration help says how to find one. If things are so heavy that you are thinking about ending your life, call or text 988 (in the U.S.), or open Get help now. If anyone is in danger, call 911.

The tool and the wording around the words were written with AI (Claude) for Scarlet Beast (our AI policy). There is no AI inside this tool. The words and their group names are USCIS’s own, a work of the U.S. government, taken by a program from the files named above on October 13, 2026; what this page says about how the test is given was read the same day on USCIS’s “Study for the Test” page. It has been checked by a program, with a mouse and a keyboard in one browser; no person has read it through yet, and the Spanish of the page has not been read by a native speaker. It keeps nothing, so it has no line on My data on this device. Also in Spanish: Práctica de lectura y escritura para la ciudadanía. Found a mistake, or a word that differs from USCIS? Email [email protected].