Ted Baker: Good morning, it's 8.15, it's FLX Morning Monday, Ted Baker filling in for Paul Small, he's back tomorrow, and it's time for our monthly segment with Literacy Volunteers of Ontario Yates, LVOY.org. Liz Searle is here, good morning.
Liz Searle: Hi Ted, great to talk to you.
Ted Baker: It's always great to talk with you, and Dorothy Hoskins, who's a volunteer tutor, is with us as well, good morning to you.
Dorothy Hoskins: Good morning.
Ted Baker: We're going to focus a lot on Dorothy and preparing for the U.S. Citizenship Test, but first, tell us a little bit, Liz, how you help learners prepare for this test. It's got to be a stressful time taking a citizenship test, and especially so if you're not proficient in English.
Liz Searle: Right, well that's actually one of the key components to the test, unless there's a few exceptions about it that would allow you to take it in your native language, but most people need to take it in English, and they have to have a certain level of proficiency not just to understand and be able to answer simple questions like, you know, are you married, do you have kids, but actually understand pretty complex questions and be able to answer them in regard to their own life. So what we do with Literacy Volunteers, often the first thing we focus on is English mastery and helping folks improve their English skills, making sure that their speaking is sufficient so that they can be easily understood and that sort of thing. So that's a lot of what we focus on early on, and once that has progressed sufficiently, we will help a learner to prepare for the actual exam. There's a whole bunch of questions to study that I know Dorothy can talk about, and even though they only get asked a few questions, they don't know which questions those will be, so they have to know the answers to all 128 of them.
Ted Baker: Dorothy, I always like to learn the stories of tutors, so tell us how you became involved with Literacy Volunteers.
Dorothy Hoskins: Sure, I worked in a kind of esoteric area of IT, but when I retired, I wanted to do something more interesting, so I got legal training from Villanova in immigration law to a certain extent, and then volunteered for a couple of years at Catholic Family Center, and I also was doing tutoring as an informal activity, and then I joined up with LVOY to become more of a regular tutor for them, and so it's a combination of immigration work and literacy work that I do.
Ted Baker: So what would you say to somebody who might be thinking of volunteering, maybe they're on the fence, I'm not sure I can do it?
Dorothy Hoskins: I think the misconception is that you have to know a different language to be an effective tutor. I think that Liz can speak to that, but it is completely expected that people will teach in English, and the students will learn in English.
Ted Baker: Remind us, Liz, we've talked about this in the past, the training process you go through and the orientation so that tutors can quickly get up to speed.
Liz Searle: Right, so once a tutor is onboarded, the process is a little bit similar to a new job where we request some paperwork, we do do some reference checks, and then once a learner, or excuse me, a tutor is ready to move forward, we sign them up for some training. All of the training is online. There's different modules, whether you're working with an immigrant who is a foreign language speaker, or if you're working with someone who is a native English speaker. So there's all sorts of different trainings available, whether you need to focus on reading or math or something else entirely, we can provide that to you and support you as you're moving forward. And as Dorothy says, if you're working with a foreign language speaker, we do not expect you to know their language. We have tools and materials and processes that actually can help, even if your learner has very little English to start with.
Ted Baker: Now, Dorothy, they've made some changes to the citizenship test recently, so how is it different now?
Dorothy Hoskins: In 2025, they rolled out the new test, which had been in development since 2020. They upped the number of questions from 100 to 128 that you have to study. They increased the number of questions they'll actually expect you to be able to answer to be 12 out of 20 that they would select from the question bank randomly. There's always certain ones that they're going to ask, like how many amendments are there to the Constitution. There's some that are very much highlighted, but a lot of it's random. So you have to be prepared for any question in that 128-question bank.
Ted Baker: Let me take a wild guess here. I'm guessing a lot of citizens wouldn't pass this test. 28 amendments, is that it?
Dorothy Hoskins: 27.
Ted Baker: Ah! There goes my citizenship. Right. I mean, yes, you're right. If you had to answer the question, John Jay is famous for many things. Name one. Yeah, I can't right off the top of my head. I'll have to come in for some tutoring myself. Let's go right to the beginning of the process. So someone has been in America. They want to become a citizen. Where do you start?
Dorothy Hoskins: Well, first of all, you have to be a legal permanent resident. That's a legal definition. That's a green card holder, as we commonly call them. For five years, unless you're married to a U.S. citizen, the time period is three years before you're even allowed to submit an application to become a citizen. And you have to pay around $710 to $760 per application. That fee is non-refundable. If you don't pass the test, you're not going to get money back. You have to provide a lot of documentation, personal documentation, like a birth certificate, foreign passport, your legal permanent residence card, birth certificates and marriage certificates for your family members. So it's a lot of documentation that you have to pull together to submit with the form.
Ted Baker: I don't want to get all political here, but I want to ask, is it more difficult to qualify to take the test in today's immigration environment?
Dorothy Hoskins: It's not more difficult to qualify to actually take the test. The standards for approving the form are, I think, pretty well set. What's different is, in the interview, they're going to ask you much more detailed questions about your personal history. They're looking for things that go to your moral character. For example, have you always paid your traffic tickets? Do you participate in any community or civic organizations? Have you been able to be steadily employed? There are many different aspects of your life they'll ask about. If you've been married and divorced, they're going to want to see the divorce certificate. They might even ask you why you got divorced. So it can get pretty personal.
Ted Baker: So what would you say to somebody considering citizenship that might be, in a couple years down the line, in terms of things you should do and maybe organizations you get involved with to meet some of those qualifications?
Dorothy Hoskins: Right. It's an excellent idea to be involved with local religious organizations, charity organizations, your PTA, local fire department, anything that you can support. This is difficult for a lot of people because they're full-time working people. They may have families, so adding this on, as well as studying for the test, can get to be a little difficult, I think. But it's very important to try to show that you are a contributing member of the American society.
Ted Baker: What sort of paperwork is needed, and is it difficult for some immigrants to come up with that paperwork?
Dorothy Hoskins: It's really difficult for people who have been here for a while to have all the paperwork at their fingertips, but usually they have gone through this a lot with the process of getting their green card. So they know that they need to have a birth certificate. They know that they need to have the passport from their home country and these other materials. So they have some preparation from that previous process, but that could be five years ago. So what they need is tax records for that five years, travel documents if they've gone in and out of the country, the W-2s, rental agreements, bank statements. Those are all good supporting materials for an application.
Ted Baker: Tell us a little bit more about the interview, because as you said, one of the things that the interviewer is doing is taking a look at how good the applicant can speak English and understand English.
Dorothy Hoskins: Sure. It starts out in the reception room when they call your name and you have to stand up and the officer will say, follow me, please. You go into the office and he or she is going to say things like, please remain standing, raise your right hand, and they're going to read you an oath because you have to actually do this as a legal process under oath when they interview you. So there are a lot of commands that you need to know and there are study materials for those commands. And then he's going to ask things like, oh, how did you get here today? What was the weather like? So there are a lot of traffic and you have to be able to respond appropriately to these kind of everyday questions, as well as the more complex questions that are going to be coming up from the actual N-400 form that you filled out. They'll go over anything in that form that they have a question about.
Ted Baker: I've seen pictures of the swearing-in ceremonies. What's that like to see someone that you've helped pick up that American flag and become a U.S. citizen?
Dorothy Hoskins: Oh, it's really thrilling. I had a friend for a decade that I helped with her citizenship and went with her to her appointment and was so glad to see her pass her exam in English with the interviewer and then to join her a few months later for the actual swearing-in at City Hall in Rochester. It was just, it was terrific.
Ted Baker: All right, Dorothy, thanks so much for your time and thanks for what you do. That's terrific.
Dorothy Hoskins: It's a pleasure.
Ted Baker: Liz, thank you as always. LVOY.org is the website. Look on how to help and click on become a tutor, right?
Liz Searle: That's right. Thanks, Ted.
Ted Baker: All right. Thanks as always. Great to talk to you both. We appreciate it.
