The other half of CELPIP writing task 1. Five informal email practice questions with model sample answers, plus the writing topics that keep coming back and the register rules that decide your Task Fulfilment mark.
Five Task 1 scenarios covering favours, bad news, invitations and thanks. No timer. Write, then reveal the model sample and the explanation.
You are moving across town at the end of the month and a rental van costs more than you can afford. Your cousin owns a pickup and lent it to you once before. Ask for it again.
Teaches: contractions, specific small talk, an offer in return that solves a problem they already have.
Practise this questionYour friend booked the Algonquin permits back in February and has already bought the food. Two weeks before the trip you injure your shoulder and your doctor bans paddling for six weeks.
Teaches: leading with the bad news, showing an apology instead of stating it, a costly make-up offer.
Practise this questionYou have booked the back room of a restaurant for your partner's fortieth and told him it is a quiet dinner with his sister. Invite a close friend who lives two hours away, and keep the secret intact.
Teaches: signposting, actionable instructions, naming the obstacle before removing it.
Practise this questionA former coworker walked your resume straight to the hiring manager instead of letting it sit in the online pile, and wrote your reference. Last week you found out you got the job.
Teaches: evidenced gratitude, splitting facts from feelings, offering two specific dates.
Practise this questionYou are the team's only goalie and work is sending you to Calgary for six weeks. The league fines any team that ices a short bench, and the schedule is about to be published.
Teaches: listing exact dates, modelling the reader's problem, arriving with the fix already arranged.
Practise this questionFormal email, informal email and survey response, all in one place with model answers.
Back to the samples hub →The informal email is one of the two faces of CELPIP writing task 1. Mechanically it is identical to the formal version: a short situation, three bullet instructions, about 150 to 200 words, roughly 27 minutes, typed into an on-screen editor and marked by CELPIP raters against the same four criteria. Only one variable changes, and it changes everything. The reader is someone you know well.
That single fact rewrites your vocabulary, your sentence lengths, your opening and your sign-off. "Dear Mr. Rodrigues, I am writing to request the use of your vehicle" is a perfectly good sentence and a bad answer, because the scenario said the reader was your cousin. Register sits inside Task Fulfilment, which is 25 percent of your score, so writing a polished formal email to a friend does not earn you points for effort. It costs you a quarter of the mark.
The trap runs the other way too. Candidates hear "informal" and produce a stream of slang and abbreviations, on the theory that more casual equals more informal. Raters are not looking for a performance of casualness. They are looking for the register a real adult actually uses with a real cousin: contractions, plain words, a genuine opening question, short sentences mixed with longer ones, and a closing that sounds like a person rather than a template.
And informal does not mean unplanned. This is the part candidates most often miss. Content and Coherence is 30 percent of your score and it does not get a discount because your reader is family. The same 150 to 200 words still need paragraphs, still need to be in a sensible order, and still need to cover all three bullets. A warm, friendly, structurally chaotic email lands in the middle bands just as reliably as a cold one does.
Identical to the formal email in every mechanical respect. The register is the only thing the scenario changes.
CELPIP writing topics stay firmly inside ordinary Canadian life. You will never be asked about foreign policy. You will be asked about a truck, a canoe trip, a birthday and a hockey team.
Borrowing a vehicle, a tool or a spare room. Needs a clear request, exact timings, and something offered in return.
Bad news that costs the reader money or effort. Needs the news up front, the money settled, and a way to make it up.
A party, a wedding, a trip. Needs complete details (date, time, place, arrival) and an obstacle removed.
For a reference, a loan, a rescue. Needs evidence of what they actually did, not the word "grateful" four times.
You let someone down. Needs a real reason, an acknowledgement of the cost to them, and a fix rather than remorse.
A job, a move, a change of schedule. Needs the facts and the feelings kept as separate, findable sentences.
Notice what all six have in common. Every one of them is a social transaction with a cost attached: you want something, or you are taking something away, or you owe something. That is not an accident. The email task exists to see whether you can handle a delicate everyday situation in writing, which is exactly what an immigrant in Canada does constantly, and it is why the scenarios always involve a real relationship with real friction in it.
The practical value of knowing the recurring topics is not that you can prepare an answer in advance. It is that you can prepare a method in advance. All six topic types collapse into the same three-part shape: say the thing, acknowledge what it costs the reader, and offer something concrete. Once that reflex is automatic, the specific topic on test day stops mattering. That is the whole point of drilling the five samples below.
The informal skeleton has one extra piece the formal one does not: a warm-up. Real people do not open with a request. They ask about your kid's soccer tournament first, and then they ask for the truck. That opening paragraph is not padding, it is register evidence, and skipping it is one of the quiet reasons an informal answer reads as cold.
Two structural moves separate a good informal email from an average one, and both appear in every sample on this page. The first is putting bad news at the top. Burying "I can't come on the canoe trip" under three paragraphs of build-up reads as evasive to a reader and as poor coherence to a rater. Lead with it, then explain.
The second is modelling the reader's problem before you ask for anything. "I know what this does to you. I'm the only goalie we've got, and the league fines us $150 every time we ice a short bench." That sentence is the most persuasive one in the whole email, because it proves you thought about the other person before you thought about yourself. It also happens to be exactly the kind of developed content that Content and Coherence, at 30 percent, is measuring.
The line between natural and careless is narrower than most candidates think. Here is which side of it these phrases sit on.
Contractions are the single highest-leverage thing on this list. Take any informal sample on this page, expand every "I've" to "I have" and every "don't" to "do not", change nothing else, and the email immediately reads as though it were written to a stranger. That is how much of your register is carried by four apostrophes. It is also the easiest fix available, because it costs no thinking time at all.
Drawn from the explanation notes on the five samples. These are the specific ways strong writers still drop a band here.
The register mismatch is the most expensive mistake on Task 1, because register lives inside Task Fulfilment at 25 percent. A beautiful formal email to your cousin is a mid-band answer, no matter how clean the grammar is.
"Sometime next weekend" instead of "Saturday the 29th, from about 9 until 3". "Most of March" instead of the six actual game dates. When a bullet asks for exactly, vagueness is a direct miss, not a stylistic choice.
"I'll owe you one" and "I'll make it up to you somehow" satisfy nothing. The bullet asks you to offer to do something, so name the something. Deck staining. A spare room. Covering a fee.
Five sorries do not equal one concrete offer of repayment, and they eat words the bullets need. Offering to transfer the money before your friend has to ask is worth more than three sentences of remorse.
"Hope you are well" proves nothing about a relationship. "How did Ella's soccer tournament go? I saw the photos and she looked pretty fierce" proves everything, in the same word count.
Thanking a former coworker for a job reference is a professional subject with a personal reader. The reader wins. Register follows the relationship, never the topic.
An informal email is one version of CELPIP Writing Task 1. The task is identical to the formal version, a situation plus three bullet instructions and 150 to 200 words in roughly 27 minutes, but the reader is someone you know well: a cousin, a friend, a teammate, a sibling. Contractions, short sentences and a warm opening are expected.
CELPIP writing topics stay in everyday Canadian life. On the informal side, the recurring ones are asking a favour, cancelling or changing plans, inviting someone to an event, thanking someone for help, apologising for a problem you caused, and giving news. On the formal side, they are complaints, requests to an institution, and proposals to a board or council. The topic changes, the method does not.
The scenario names the reader. If it is a cousin, a friend, a teammate, a sibling or a former coworker you are close to, write informally. If it is a company, a councillor, a registrar or a board, write formally. The prompt always tells you, and choosing the wrong register is the most expensive single mistake available on Task 1.
No. Informal means natural, not a performance of casualness. Raters want a register that genuinely fits the relationship: contractions, plain words, varied sentence lengths, a real opening. Heavy slang, text abbreviations and emoji read as a candidate trying too hard and pull the band down rather than up.
Yes. Informal does not mean unplanned. Content and Coherence is 30 percent of your score, and it does not get a discount because the reader is your cousin. The same 150 to 200 words still need clear paragraphs, one per bullet, and a logical order.
Exactly like the formal one: Content and Coherence at 30 percent, Vocabulary at 20 percent, Readability at 25 percent and Task Fulfilment at 25 percent, reported on the CLB 1 to 12 scale. Register sits inside Task Fulfilment, which is why writing formally to a friend is so costly.
About 150 to 200 words, the same as the formal email and the same as Task 2. A short warm-up paragraph plus one paragraph per bullet plus a one-line sign-off lands inside the range naturally.
A little, and make it specific. One or two lines asking about something real in the reader's life, a tournament, a job, a renovation, proves the relationship in a way that hope you are well never can. Keep it to a couple of sentences, because the three bullets still need most of your word budget.
Yes. All 5 informal email questions, their model sample answers and the full explanations are free, with no account and no credit card required.
Yes. Every scenario and sample answer follows the 2026 CELPIP format: a situation plus three bullets, 150 to 200 words, roughly 27 minutes for Task 1, scored on the CLB 1 to 12 scale.
Learn the other register, then meet Task 2, then prove all of it against a clock.
CELPIP writing task 1 explained in full, with 5 formal samples.
See 5 samples →Responding to survey questions. Two options, one choice, no greeting.
See 5 samples →Both tasks under the real 27 and 26 minute limits, with expert feedback.
Start a writing test →Full-length CELPIP mock tests across all four skills in one place.
View mock tests →No timer, no evaluation. Write your answer, then reveal the model sample and see exactly which choices earned the band.
