CELPIP Reading Part 2: Reading to Apply a Diagram

CELPIP Reading Part 2, Reading to Apply a Diagram, gives you a comparison table of four options and an email that refers to them. You complete the email, then answer follow-up questions. It is worth 8 marks in 8 minutes, and it is the part where careful readers lose time and careless readers lose marks.

On Reading Test 10 the diagram compares four vehicle-sharing and rental plans in Nanaimo, British Columbia.

What Part 2 asks you to do on this test

The four options are an Hourly Car Share at $14.50 an hour with 25 km included, returnable to any marked space in the network; a Weekend Getaway Rate at $63.00 a day with 400 km, booked as a block from Friday noon to Monday morning and collected only from the Terminal Avenue lot; a Monthly Commuter Plan whose $29 monthly membership buys the lowest hourly rate at $9.75 with 40 km; and a Cargo Van Day Rate at $99.00 a day with 150 km.

Three of the four fit some of what the emailer needs. Exactly one fits all of it. The deciding detail is almost never the price: on this diagram it is where the vehicle may be returned, how many kilometres are included before the per-kilometre charge starts, and whether the booking has to be a fixed block.

How to work Part 2 in eight minutes

• Read the email first, not the diagram. Write down what the writer actually needs before any prices are in your head.
• Turn each requirement into a filter and cross options out. Four options against three requirements is a two-minute job done in that order and a six-minute job done the other way.
• The row everyone skips is the constraint row. Collection point, minimum booking, extra-kilometre rate. That is where the answer lives.
• Specific Information questions here are pure lookup. Bank them fast, because the follow-up questions are where the time goes.
• Eight minutes for eight questions means one minute each with nothing spare. If a comparison is not resolving, guess and move on.

The rest of Reading Test 10

Part 1, Reading Correspondence is a letter to Ravi from a friend eleven months into a move to Nanaimo, in a house on a slope above the harbour that cost roughly what a parking space costs in the city he left. Part 3, Reading for Information is a passage on jack pine and the fire cycle of the boreal forest, including why a recent burn is not an empty place and why a century of putting every fire out changed the forest. Part 4, Reading for Viewpoints reports on the Comox Valley Minor Hockey Association, which voted nine to four to keep every player under twelve in local house leagues and dissolved four travel teams.

CELPIP Reading format: where Part 2 sits

Part 2 is second, shortest and the only part built around a table rather than prose. It is also the part where the answer is most often a condition attached to an option rather than the headline number.

How Part 2 is scored

Eight marks, one correct answer each, no penalty for a wrong one. The email completions and the follow-up questions are worth the same. Everything is marked the moment you submit, and the CELPIP reading score chart converts your raw score out of 38 to a CLB level.