Given the laborious nature of interpreting testing and the scoring process, most interpreting exams adopt language proficiency tests in the first phase as a screening mechanism. The present research assessed test activities employed in the first phase of three of the most representative English-Chinese interpreting exams, and identified ‘spot dictation’, ‘short-answer listening comprehension with note-taking’, and ‘summary’ as more potentially applicable test activities as compared to ‘verbatim dictation’ and ‘short-answer listening comprehension’. All the test activities were then administered to participants trained in interpreting and participants who were never trained in interpreting so as to observe whether differences in test activities have an impact on participant performance. The results show participants who never trained in interpreting perform better in ‘verbatim dictation’ than in ‘spot dictation’, while participants trained in interpreting perform equally well in both; participants never trained in interpreting perform better in ‘short-answer listening comprehension’ than in ‘shortanswer listening comprehension with note-taking’, while participants trained in interpreting perform equally well in both; participants trained in interpreting outperform participants never trained in interpreting in ‘summary’ activity. It is thus argued that ‘spot dictation’, ‘short-answer listening comprehension with note-taking’, and ‘summary’ may be more applicable for screening purposes for consecutive interpreting.