NAATI CCL test format and marking, explained

The dialogues are set in Australia and feel like real conversations: a parent talking to a school, a client at a bank, a patient at a clinic. The English speaker is usually a professional or service provider; the other speaker is a community member.

Each dialogue is marked out of 45, for a total of 90. NAATI uses mark deduction: you start with full marks and lose marks for errors, weighted by how much each error affects communication. A small slip in grammar costs less than a changed number or a missing instruction.

In practice, deductions come from a few broad areas:

• Accuracy — distorting meaning, leaving something out, or adding something that wasn't said.
• Quality of language — grammar, word choice and naturalness in both English and your other language, including using English words where your language has a common equivalent.
• Register — keeping an appropriately polite, respectful tone with each speaker.
• Delivery — long hesitations, frequent self-corrections, unfinished sentences.
• Repeats — asking for more repeats than allowed (see below).

To pass, you need at least 63 out of 90 overall and at least 29 out of 45 in each dialogue. That second rule catches people out: a strong first dialogue can't rescue a weak second one.

For practice, this means you should treat every dialogue as if it has to pass on its own. Consistency beats a few brilliant segments.

NAATI's candidate instructions allow you to ask for one segment per dialogue to be repeated without penalty. Further repeats attract deductions. You can also correct yourself if you notice an error — but frequent corrections are themselves penalised, because they affect delivery.

Our guide to CCL repeats and self-correction covers when it's worth using your free repeat and how to correct yourself cleanly.

After each segment there's a chime, and NAATI's instructions ask you to start interpreting within about five seconds. A brief pause to gather your thoughts is fine; long silences cost marks for delivery and can leave you short of time overall.

1. Practise both directions equally. Many candidates are stronger into English or into their language. The examiner hears both.
2. Practise segment by segment, out loud. Reading dialogues silently doesn't build the speed you need after the chime.
3. Drill numbers, dates and names. They're the easiest marks to lose and the easiest to train.
4. Train your memory for 35 words, with light notes as backup. See our CCL note-taking guide.
5. Cover all domains. Our CCL topics guide lists them with the kinds of situations to expect.
6. Do full dialogues under test conditions — no pausing, one repeat, start within five seconds.

NAATI offers a free practice test and downloadable past materials, which are the best place to hear the official format. For repetition beyond that, XINGO's CCL practice runs CCL-style dialogues with two AI speakers — an English-speaking professional and a community member speaking your language — so you interpret both ways, out loud, turn by turn. Each assessed attempt is scored out of 90 with feedback on accuracy, language quality and delivery. It's independent practice, not an official NAATI score.