CritiCall listening, memory and multitasking

The parts that arrive through a headset — call summarisation, short-term recall, and doing two of them at once.

There are no practice questions on this page.

These modules play audio and take it away again. On a page you can re-read a paragraph as often as you like, which is the one thing the real items are built to prevent — so a written imitation would be practising the opposite skill.

Call summarisation

Biddle runs two versions. Call Summarization 1 is general note-taking from a voice: hear the call, type what matters, filter out what does not. Call Summarization 2 wants detailed answers to specific questions about what you heard.

The skill underneath is deciding, in real time, which sentence in a stream of speech is the one that goes in the record. Callers do not deliver facts in order of importance, and the test is built on that.

Memory recall and vocalisation

Memory Recall (Short Term) presents written and audible information and asks for it back, sometimes spoken and sometimes typed — descriptions, plates, phone numbers. Vocalization Summary asks you to select audible information according to a decision rule while ignoring the rest.

The booklet is specific about the span involved: it suggests practising by hearing a seven-digit phone number, waiting until the reader has finished, and then typing it from memory, over and over until it is accurate. That is the actual size of the thing being tested.

Multitasking is not a separate exercise

The Multi-Tasking module is a combination rather than a topic: decision items appear while you are doing something else, and the booklet says so — you may be asked to respond to emergency messages “while performing other tasks on the computer”, with fifteen seconds each.

That is why practising the parts separately has a ceiling. Every module here is answerable on its own; the test is whether they are answerable together. The realistic version of that practice is to run the dispatch decision set on this site with something else demanding your attention, rather than in silence.

What to do instead of a fake quiz

  • Have somebody read you a short incident and give the essentials back from memory, then check.
  • Practise the seven-digit span the booklet describes, until accuracy is boring.
  • Use a headset and adjust the volume before you start — the real test is delivered through one, and you are allowed to set the level.
  • Do the unscored practice items on the day. The booklet says every section starts with them, that they do not count, and that you may skip them. Skipping them is free and costs you the one look at the format you get.

The parts that do have questions.

Biddle Consulting Group assembles its test from a library of modules and each agency picks its own, so most candidates sit several of these alongside the part described above.

Dispatch decisionsReading comprehensionSpelling and sentence clarityData checking Full timed run

The other parts without a quiz

Data entry and typing

Typing what you hear into the right field, in capitals, while something else is happening.

Map reading

Reading a route off a deliberately plain map, and placing a caller from what they say.

Frequently asked

Can I take notes during CritiCall?
The booklet does not say, and it varies by module and by the agency running the session — the instructions given at the start of each section govern. The one rule it does publish about a section’s instructions is worth carrying: follow them, because some parts change the standing rules for that part only.
How long is the whole test?
Biddle publishes one figure and it is a range: the testing process takes, on average, between one and three hours. It varies because each agency picks its own combination of modules from a library of more than twenty. There is no single CritiCall to have a length.
Why can this site not practise the listening parts?
Because it is a text site, and the items are audio you hear once. Writing them out would let you re-read them, which removes the thing being measured. The other three question sets here are the parts where a page and the real test ask the same thing.

Sources

Every figure on this page comes from one of the documents below, with the day it was read. Requirements change — open the source if you need today's wording.

Hiring Test Practice is independent practice material and is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or authorized by Criteria Corp, Wonderlic, Inc., National Testing Network, the electrical training ALLIANCE, the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, NECA, Biddle Consulting Group, Inc., Pearson Education, Inc. or its TalentLens business, the California Firefighter Joint Apprenticeship Committee or the Firefighter Candidate Testing Center, Fire and Police Selection, Inc., I/O Solutions, Inc., Ergometrics & Applied Personnel Research, Inc., the International Association of Fire Fighters or the International Association of Fire Chiefs. CCAT® is a registered trademark of Criteria Corp; Wonderlic® is a registered trademark of Wonderlic, Inc.; CritiCall is a trademark of Biddle Consulting Group, Inc.; Bennett Mechanical Comprehension Test is a trademark of Pearson Education, Inc.; FCTC and CPAT are used to name tests administered by others. Test names are used only to describe what this material prepares you for. Every question here is original and none is taken from any actual assessment. Cal-JAC and FCTC publish that materials supplied directly by them are the only authorized FCTC Written Test materials; this site is one of the outside sources that warning refers to, and it links their free study guide rather than reproducing it.