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SAMPLE QUESTIONS: THE FEDERAL CLERICAL EXAMINATION
The Federal Clerical Examination is administered in whole or in part to applicants for jobs in more than
60 different clerical fields. One of these is the position of Customs Aid, for which the full examination
is used.
The first part of the examination is called the Verbal Tasks Test. This section includes questions in such
areas as spelling, meaning, and relationship of words; recognition of sentences that are grammatically
correct; and reading, understanding, and using written material. These test tasks relate to a variety of job
tasks such as proofreading and correcting typed copy, using instruction manuals, organizing files of
related materials, and carrying out written instructions.
The Verbal Tasks Test consists of 85 questions to be answered in 35 minutes. Of these:
· 25 are word-meaning questions in which you must choose the word that is closest in meaning to the
given word.
· 10 are reading questions in which you must choose the statement that says the same thing as the short
paragraph it follows.
· 10 are grammar questions in which you must choose the version of a sentence that is grammatically
correct.
· 20 are spelling questions in which you choose which three given spellings of a word is correct or
determine that none of the choices is the correct spelling.
· 20 are word-relationship questions in which you complete a relationship by choosing a word that is
related to a given word in the same way as the second word in a presented pair is related to the first.
The second part of the Federal Clerical Examination is called the Clerical Tasks Test. This is a test of
speed and accuracy on four clerical tasks. There are 120 questions to be answered within the very short
time limit of 15 minutes. There are 30 questions of each of the four types. These are presented in cycles
of five questions of each type. Since accuracy is an important consideration in the scoring of this test, there
is a penalty for wrong answers. However, speed is also important, so you must move quickly from
question to question without rechecking for perfection. The four types of questions are:
1. Name and number comparisons, in which you must determine which names or numbers in three
columns are exactly alike. The answering code is repeated on every page, but you will find yourself
working much more quickly if you can memorize the answering code.
2. Alphabetizing, in which you must place a given name into its proper location in a list of names.
Alphabetize first by last names, disregarding capital letters in the middle of names and ignoring
punctuation within names. Where two or more last names are identical, alphabetize by first names. If
both last and first names are identical, consider initials.
3. Arithmetic, in which you choose the correct answer or decide that none of the given answers is correct.
All answers are whole numbers; if you get a decimal, you made a mistake.
4. Letter and number inspection questions, in which you must choose which of the suggested answers
contains only letters and numbers in the given question. The letters and numbers can appear in any
order, but all letters and numbers in the answer must appear in the question.
