By Chris Willette
The Test Advisory Committee (TAC) met June 8-11 at NCRA headquarters in Reston, Va., to work on test creation for upcoming online testing opportunities. As Board liaison, I was fortunate to attend and participate in the process.
TAC is supported by two other committees: the Skills Test Writing Committee and Written Knowledge Test Committee. The volunteers of these three groups work all year long to provide vetted questions for the Written Knowledge Tests as well as “takes” for the Skills Tests of the NCRA certification programs.
Along with the work of TAC comes the opportunity to learn new things and share ideas about briefs and theories. There is also a lot of laughter along the way. Once we realized that there was so much valuable information, we decided to keep a list of what we thought members might not know.
Hint: We learned these things while preparing future tests. You might want to pay attention!
- X-ray as a noun is capitalized; as a verb, Merriam-Webster shows it with no capitalization.
- Pawnshop is one word.
- Dumpster is capitalized.
- Canceling/cancelling and traveling/travelling are both acceptable as correct spellings.
- Curveball is one word.
Briefs
| central | STRAL |
| Central Avenue | STRAEF |
| exchange | CH |
| good evening | GAOENG |
| good luck | GLUCK |
| good morning | GORNG |
| greater weight of the evidence | GRAEFD |
| keep in mind | KAOEMD |
| iPad | P*AD |
| iPhone | FO*EN |
| iPod | P*OD |
| off the top of my head | FOPD |
| pain and suffering | PUFRG |
| text message | TEJ |
| volunteer | VO |
Brief groupings
| aware | WAUR |
| aware of | WAUFR |
| are you aware | RAUR |
| are you aware of | RAUFR |
| are you aware of the | RAUFRT |
| were you aware | WRAUR |
| were you aware of | WRAUFR |
| were you aware of the | WRAUFRT |
| left arm | LARM |
| right arm | RARM |
| left leg | LLG |
| right leg | RLG |
| shoulder | SHOURLD |
| left shoulder | LOURLD |
| right shoulder | ROURLD |
Chris Willette, RDR, CRR, CRC, is the 2016-2017 NCRA President-Elect and a freelance reporter in Wausau, Wis. She can be reached at cwillette2@gmail.com.
