CELPIP Reading Mock Test 15

Reading Mock Test 15 is the second of the hard tests in this set, and it is built around one idea: a sentence that is true up to the comma and different after it. That is where its distractors come from, and it is why reading fast is punished here more than reading slowly.

What is in this reading test?

Part 1, Reading Correspondence is a letter to Rasmus from someone six months into a thirty-unit co-housing building in Vancouver. Rasmus had predicted she would last a year and be miserable for eleven months of it. She concedes almost every particular he raised, starting with the meeting and the single facilitator, and then tells him he was wrong anyway.

Part 2, Reading to Apply a Diagram compares four travel medical insurance policies: Single Trip Basic at $88 with a $1,000,000 limit, a $500 deductible and pre-existing conditions covered only if stable for twelve months; Single Trip Plus at $214 with no deductible, a three month stability window and the only policy that pays for a supervised flight home; Annual Multi-Trip at $179 with unlimited trips but none longer than fifteen days and sold only under sixty; and Snowbird Extended Stay at $436.

Part 3, Reading for Information is a passage on the narwhal: the tusk that is a left upper canine rather than a horn, winter dives past a thousand metres in Baffin Bay and the Davis Strait, navigation by a narrowed beam of clicks in the dark, and why counting narwhals from aerial surveys is harder than it looks.

Part 4, Reading for Viewpoints reports on the Thompson Ridge Family Practice in Kamloops, which stopped booking appointments the ordinary way after closing its waiting list twice in one year and now begins every non-urgent request as a video call.

CELPIP Reading format: parts, questions and time

What makes this one hard

The insurance diagram is the hardest Part 2 in the set, because the four policies differ on four axes at once: premium, coverage limit, deductible and the stability window for pre-existing conditions. An option that is cheapest is never also the one with the shortest stability window. And the narwhal passage puts its most examinable sentence, about why the standard population figures are uncertain, in the last paragraph, where a candidate who is behind the clock will not reach it.

How your reading is scored

Selected response throughout, one correct answer per question, no penalty for guessing, and instant marking with the correct option displayed. The CELPIP reading score chart converts your raw score out of 38 to a CLB level.

Tips for this test

• In Part 2, build a four by four grid before you answer anything. Premium, limit, deductible, stability window.
• Read to the end of the sentence in Part 1. This letter concedes a point and then reverses it, repeatedly.
• In Part 3, get to paragraph D. The uncertainty in the counts is the most-tested idea in the passage.
• In Part 4, note that the clinic and its critics both cite the closed waiting list. Same fact, opposite conclusions.
• Guess anything you cannot finish. Nothing is deducted for a wrong answer.