Nobody should meet the format of an exam for the first time on exam day. A mock test is not extra practice. It is the practice: the one activity that trains the exam itself rather than the language in general. Let me explain why the research and the profession agree on this, and then be openly promotional for two paragraphs, because I built the tool I am about to recommend.
Why simulations work
Two reasons, one cognitive and one practical. The cognitive one is the testing effect: retrieving knowledge under exam conditions strengthens it far more than reviewing the same material again, a finding I unpack in the article on retrieval practice. A mock exam is retrieval practice at full scale, with the clock, the task types and the pressure included in the training.
The practical reason is that exams have a craft to them. Knowing that the audio plays a fixed number of times, that the writing task wants specific points covered, that the reading section rewards scanning before deep reading: none of this is Italian, all of it is points. Candidates at the same language level routinely score a section apart depending on whether the format is familiar or foreign. Familiarity is cheap to buy and expensive to skip.
How to use a mock test properly
Three rules. Complete and timed, always: a simulation done in pieces on the sofa measures nothing. Scored honestly, section by section, because the exam passes by thresholds and your average flatters you; the section that decides most exams is listening, as I argue in the listening article. And repeated on a schedule: one full simulation as an initial diagnosis, then weekly, then twice weekly near the date, with the weeks in between steered by the section scores. That schedule sits inside the full preparation plan.
Where to find 35 of them
Here is the promised promotion, delivered with a teacher’s conscience. Official sample papers exist on the certifying bodies' sites and you should absolutely do them; there are only a few, and they are the ground truth for format. The problem is volume: a serious rehearsal block needs more complete papers than the official samples provide. This is why the 
amo Italian app now has a dedicated B1 exam section with 35 complete mock tests built around the citizenship exam: full papers with listening, reading, writing and speaking tasks, timed, scored section by section, repeatable, on your phone, alongside the course and the graded readers that build the level in the first place. And the honest boundary, stated as always: these are training simulations. The certificate comes only from CILS, CELI, PLIDA or Cert.it, and the app’s job is to make sure you walk into that room having already passed thirty times. The wider roadmap is in the complete guide, and the app itself is presented on the citizenship page of the languages hub.
Note and attributions: the testing effect summarised here is from Roediger and Karpicke, Psychological Science, 2006, paraphrased with attribution. CILS, CELI, PLIDA and Cert.it are certifications of their respective institutions, named for identification only. The amo Italian app’s simulations are training material, not an official exam or certificate.
