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ICAO English test sample

One complete worked example: a listening item with its transcript and answers, a picture task answered at Level 4, Level 5 and Level 6 so you can hear the difference, and an interview answer marked skill by skill.

Play the listening item

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3
Sample tasks
6
Skills annotated
3
Levels compared
2
Plays per recording

Task 1

Listening: Taxi clearance at a quiet airfield

A light aircraft pilot at the main apron calls the ground controller for taxi. One instruction carries three facts.

Before the first play

The taxi instruction packs three facts into one sentence: the runway, the taxiway and the QNH. Try to catch all three on the first play.

In the real thing you would hear this twice and no more. Read the hint, then answer from memory before you look at the transcript.

The transcript

Open it after you have answered, not before.
  1. PilotWestfield Ground, Delta Echo Kilo Papa Alfa, at the main apron, information Bravo, request taxi for departure.
  2. ControllerDelta Echo Kilo Papa Alfa, Westfield Ground, taxi to holding point runway two four via taxiway Alfa, QNH one zero one eight.
  3. PilotTaxi to holding point runway two four via Alfa, QNH one zero one eight, Delta Echo Kilo Papa Alfa.

The questions, with the answers

  • L-RT-E1-Q1

    Which runway is the aircraft cleared to taxi towards?

    • Runway 24Correct
    • Runway 06
    • Runway 22
    • Runway 04

    Runway numbers are always spoken digit by digit: "runway two four" is runway 24. The near miss is runway 22, which would be spoken "two two"; train your ear on the second digit.

  • L-RT-E1-Q2

    What QNH did the controller pass?

    • 1018Correct
    • 1008
    • 1028
    • 1013

    Pressure settings are read digit by digit: "one zero one eight". A single misheard digit changes your altimeter by up to several hundred feet, which is why the full readback of QNH is mandatory.

What this task rates

Comprehension, and specifically the two things that decide it on the radio: numbers, and how many facts survive a single transmission. An instruction that carries three separate items is where a comfortable listener and an uncomfortable one part company, and no amount of vocabulary compensates for missing one.

Play this set in the trainer

Task 2

Picture description: Weather ahead in the cruise

Describe what you can see, explain why it matters, and say what you think the crew will do next.

What the picture shows, and the clock you get

An aircraft in the cruise with a large storm cloud directly ahead: a dark base, a high spreading top, heavy rain falling below it and lightning inside it. The sky behind the aircraft is clear. The trainer draws it and runs a visible 75 second timer, which is the discipline a real picture task applies.

A full description covers all of this

  • The setting: an aircraft in the cruise, at altitude
  • The weather ahead: a large storm cloud (cumulonimbus)
  • The details: rain falling and lightning in the cloud
  • The danger: what a thunderstorm contains
  • The likely action: avoid it, request a deviation

The same picture, answered at three levels

All three cover the checklist. What separates them is how much interpretation sits on top of the description, and the annotations say which rated skill each move belongs to.

Level 4

Operational

In the picture I can see an aeroplane. It is flying at high level, from the left to the right. In front of the aeroplane there is a very big cloud. It is dark at the bottom and it is very tall. Under the cloud I can see rain, and inside the cloud there is a light, I think it is lightning, so it is a storm cloud. This is not good for the aeroplane, because inside a storm there is strong turbulence and maybe ice or hail. The pilots must not fly into it. I think they will ask the controller to turn left or right, maybe twenty degrees, and after that they come back to the route.

Pronunciation
Clear enough to follow throughout. The speaker slows down on the long words rather than pushing through them, which is the right trade.
Structure
Present and simple future are solid. One slip in the last clause, they come back instead of they will come back, and the meaning survives it, which is exactly where the operational line sits.
Vocabulary
Everyday words carry the whole description: very big cloud, dark at the bottom. That is enough at this level, and the paraphrase for lightning, a light inside the cloud, is worth more than the missing word cost.
Fluency
Short sentences, but they keep coming. There is no long silence and no abandoned sentence.
Comprehension
Not tested by a picture task on its own. It is rated from the follow-up questions the assessor asks afterwards.
Interactions
Also rated from the follow-ups rather than the description. Nothing here blocks an exchange.

Level 5

Extended

In this picture there is a passenger aircraft in the cruise, flying from left to right at high altitude. Directly ahead of it there is a large storm cloud with a dark base and a flat top spreading out sideways, which is typical of a well developed thunderstorm. Below the cloud I can see heavy rain reaching the ground, and there is a flash of lightning inside it, while the sky behind the aircraft is completely clear. The situation matters because a cloud like this contains severe turbulence, hail and icing, and flying through it could damage the aircraft or injure the cabin crew. I would expect the pilots to have seen it on the weather radar some time ago, so they will probably ask air traffic control for a deviation of perhaps twenty or thirty degrees, pass upwind of the cloud, and then rejoin the route once they are clear of it.

Pronunciation
Comfortable rhythm across long sentences, and the stress stays on the right syllable in the technical words.
Structure
Relative clauses, a modal perfect (to have seen it), and a conditional consequence (could damage) all appear and all hold up.
Vocabulary
Precise and aeronautical: in the cruise, base, severe turbulence, icing, weather radar, deviation, upwind. Anvil is paraphrased rather than named, and the paraphrase is accurate.
Fluency
Speaks at length with the sentences planned far enough ahead that the clauses land where they were aimed.
Comprehension
Not tested by the description itself.
Interactions
Not tested by the description itself.

Level 6

Expert

What I am looking at is a jet in the cruise with a mature cumulonimbus dead ahead: a dark, heavily precipitating base, a well defined anvil sheared off downwind, and a discharge in the core. Everything behind the aircraft is clear, which suggests an isolated cell rather than a line, and that distinction matters, because an isolated cell can simply be gone around whereas a line has to be planned through a gap. The hazards are the familiar ones, severe turbulence, hail thrown well beyond the visible edge, airframe icing and the lightning itself, so the crew will want a generous margin rather than a token one, and they will want it on the upwind side, since the anvil and anything it is carrying spread downwind. In practice I would expect them to have been watching this on radar for a while, to have asked for weather avoidance early while the deviation was still cheap in track miles, and to be negotiating a heading with the controller rather than announcing one, because at that level there will be other aircraft doing exactly the same thing.

Pronunciation
Natural rate, natural stress, and the emphasis lands on the words that carry the argument rather than falling where the grammar happens to put it.
Structure
Long sentences with subordination stacked several deep, and every one of them closes correctly.
Vocabulary
Idiomatic as well as technical: mature cumulonimbus, sheared off downwind, cheap in track miles, a token margin. Nothing is paraphrased because nothing needs to be.
Fluency
Effortless. The speaker is thinking about the weather, not about the English.
Comprehension
Not tested by the description itself.
Interactions
Not tested by the description itself, though negotiating rather than announcing is the interactions habit an assessor would recognise.

Describe this picture in the trainer

Task 3

Interview question, answered twice

An assessor asks this and then follows it. Both answers below are complete and both would pass; the annotations show what the second one is doing that the first is not.

The question

Tell me about a misunderstanding on the radio and how it was resolved.

Expect this follow-up: How do you prevent the same thing happening again?

Level 4

Operational

Yes, this happened to me in the circuit at my home field. I was number two behind another aircraft, and the controller gave me an instruction, but I did not hear all of it because the transmission was not clear. I thought she said to extend downwind, but I was not sure. So I asked her, say again for Delta Kilo. She repeated it, and she said extend downwind and report final. Then I read it back and everything was normal. It was my mistake, because I was busy with the checks and I was not listening carefully. Now I always ask again when I am not sure, because it is better to ask one time than to do the wrong thing.

Pronunciation
Understandable throughout. The read-back phrase is delivered slowly and clearly, which is the part that has to be.
Structure
Past simple and past continuous are used correctly to separate the background from the event. The reported speech is simple but it is right.
Vocabulary
Enough operational vocabulary for the story: circuit, number two, extend downwind, report final, read it back. Nothing is invented and nothing is vague.
Fluency
Some hesitation, and the sentences are short, but the story reaches its end without collapsing.
Comprehension
Demonstrated inside the story rather than claimed: the speaker noticed that they had not understood, which is the first half of this criterion.
Interactions
The strongest part of the answer. Say again is the correct repair tool, it was used at the right moment, and the read-back that followed closed the loop.

Level 6

Expert

Yes, and the interesting part was how ordinary it looked at the time. I was inbound to a fairly busy uncontrolled field, and a traffic call put another aircraft on a long final while I was joining crosswind. I read back what I thought I had heard and carried on. What I had actually heard was a callsign one letter different from mine, so the picture I was building belonged to somebody else entirely, and I spent about ninety seconds looking for an aeroplane that was never going to be there. What broke it was not clever airmanship, it was that the other pilot noticed my read-back did not match anything he had said, and simply asked me to confirm my position. Once we both said our full callsigns slowly, the whole thing unwound in about ten seconds. What I took from it is that a read-back is a two-way check and not a formality: it is there so somebody else can catch you, and the moment you treat it as a ritual you have thrown away the only defence in the loop. So now I use my full callsign for longer than strictly necessary at a busy field, and if a transmission does not fit the picture I have, I say so straight away instead of quietly making it fit.

Pronunciation
Natural pace with the pauses used for emphasis rather than for retrieval.
Structure
Past perfect, past continuous and past simple hold three different time frames apart without effort, and the conditional at the end is fully controlled.
Vocabulary
Precise and idiomatic together: joining crosswind, a traffic call, a defence in the loop, quietly making it fit. The last one is the kind of phrase that only comes from thinking in the language.
Fluency
Continuous, shaped and self-corrected once for accuracy rather than for grammar.
Comprehension
Shown rather than asserted: the whole story is about detecting a misunderstanding that nobody had flagged.
Interactions
The answer names the repair, credits the other pilot for it, and generalises it into a habit. That last move is what separates an expert answer from a good one.

The four beats both answers use

Set the scene, say what was done, give the result, add what it meant. Neither answer was memorised, and both are organised, which is the combination the fluency rating is actually looking for. The trainer puts those four beats beside every interview question.

Answer this set out loud in the trainer

The six skills these tasks are rated against

Each is rated separately, and your overall level is the lowest of the six rather than the average. The descriptions below are SkyStudy's own; the authoritative wording lives in the rating scale and is not reproduced here.

  • Pronunciation

    How much your accent, stress, rhythm and intonation interfere with being understood. An accent is fine; an accent that blocks understanding is not.

  • Structure

    Your control of grammar and sentence patterns, from basic (past tenses, questions) to complex (conditionals, reported speech), and whether errors change the meaning.

  • Vocabulary

    The range and accuracy of the words you use for common, concrete and work-related topics, and your ability to paraphrase when a word is missing.

  • Fluency

    Your tempo and hesitation, and whether you can produce stretches of speech, not just single phrases. Raters also listen for rehearsed versus spontaneous speech.

  • Comprehension

    How accurately you understand what you hear, on routine topics and when a situation takes an unexpected turn, across different accents.

  • Interactions

    How you manage the exchange: immediate, informative responses, and checking, confirming or clarifying when something is unclear.

Frequently asked questions

Where the sample came from, why three levels, and what it cannot tell you.

Is this a real ICAO English test paper?

No. Real assessment items are the property of the bodies that write them and are not published, so any page claiming to be a real paper is either wrong or infringing. These three tasks are original SkyStudy work, written against the same six rated skills the assessment measures, and every one of them can be attempted in the free trainer.

What does an ICAO English test sample usually include?

Most formats share three shapes, and all three are on this page: listening to a recording and answering questions about it, describing a picture of an aviation situation against a clock, and answering interview questions about your own flying that move from routine to non-routine. The details differ because each competent authority approves its own assessments.

Why show the picture task answered at three levels?

Because the gap between the levels is not the amount of English, it is the amount of interpretation. The Level 4 answer describes what is there. The Level 5 answer describes it and explains why it matters. The Level 6 answer does both and then weighs one course of action against another. Seeing the three side by side is faster than reading a descriptor.

Can I get a level from this sample?

No. Nothing on this page rates you, and no self-assessment can. Only an assessor certified by a competent authority or an approved language testing body can evaluate your proficiency and record a level on your licence. Use the sample to see what a strong answer contains, then practise producing one.

How do I practise the tasks on this page?

Each of the three carries a control that opens the same task in the free trainer, where the recording plays, the picture is drawn, the timer runs and the model answer stays hidden until you have had your attempt. It is free while SkyStudy is in beta and needs no sign-up.

Go deeper

The rest of the free ICAO English cluster. Each page answers one question and ends with an exercise you can start.

Back to the free ICAO English trainer

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