NAATI CCL Vocabulary List

The CCL test never asks you to define a word. Vocabulary is tested indirectly: each dialogue drops terms like referral, bail or superannuation into a conversation, and you have to carry their meaning into the other language within a few seconds. If you do not know a term, you cannot pause to look it up — you either paraphrase it accurately or lose marks for an omission or distortion.

That is why the useful unit to study is not a long dictionary list but the working set of community-services terms that actually appear in dialogues: the names of Australian systems (Medicare, Centrelink, bond, bulk billing), the people in them (GP, caseworker, landlord), and the actions around them (lodge a claim, issue a fine, renew a lease). The 214 terms on this page are organised into ten practice domains spanning the subject areas NAATI publishes, with that working-set focus.

Knowing the English term is only half the job — you also need a reliable equivalent in your language that a non-expert would understand. A technically correct but obscure translation of “referral” can still cost you marks if it would confuse the patient in the dialogue.

Work domain by domain rather than alphabetically. Pick one domain a week, learn the terms in both directions (English → your language and back), then test yourself inside real dialogue practice — recognising a word on a list is much easier than producing its equivalent mid-interpretation, and the gap between the two is where marks are lost.

If it helps to hear the terms before you drill them, the short video below walks through sixteen must-know terms from this list — Centrelink, Medicare, bulk billing, super, bond, AVO and more — and covers the one rule that saves the most study time: proper nouns like Centrelink and Medicare keep their English names, while nearly everything else is said in your language.

Beyond that starting set, flashcards with spaced repetition work well for the recognition half. For the production half, there is no substitute for interpreting full dialogues under time pressure and checking which terms you fumbled. A free Lingo Copilot CCL account includes the full 214-term list with flashcards and review queues, plus practice dialogues that use these terms in context.