CELPIP Writing practice tests

What is CELPIP Writing Task 2?

Task 2 is called Responding to Survey Questions. You are given an everyday situation, usually a decision facing a workplace, a school or a town, followed by Option A and Option B. Your job is to pick one option and explain why, using reasons a reader can follow. There is no right answer. Both options are always defensible, and the score comes from how well you argue, not from which one you choose.

Choosing neither is the one thing that is never acceptable. In the writing tests submitted here, the two most common ways candidates lose Task Fulfilment marks are leaving Task 2 blank because Task 1 ran long, and writing a general discussion of both options without ever naming a choice. Both are avoidable in the last two minutes.

How many words is CELPIP Writing Task 2, and how long do you get?

Write 150 to 200 words in 26 minutes. Task 1, the email, gets 27 minutes for the same 150 to 200 words, and the two clocks are separate, so running long on Task 1 cannot borrow time from Task 2. Paragon publishes both figures in its CELPIP-General Overview Participant Package, and the screen shows a live word count and a spellcheck while you type.

How to start CELPIP Writing Task 2

State your choice in the first sentence, before any background. Something as plain as "I believe the city should build the recreational park" is enough, and it immediately tells the rater you have completed the task. Openings that restate the survey situation, or that set out both sides before committing, waste words you need for your reasons and delay the one thing the rater is looking for.

After that, four moves carry the rest of the response: reason one developed over three or four sentences, reason two developed the same way, then a concession to the option you rejected followed by a one-line restatement of your choice. Two reasons explained properly always score better than five listed quickly.

Is there a CELPIP Writing Task 2 template?

A structure helps and a memorised template hurts. The four moves above are a structure: they tell you what each paragraph is for, and every word in them still comes from the prompt in front of you. A template is different. It is pre-written sentences carried into the exam, and because Task Fulfilment is scored against the specific survey on your screen, a polished response about a slightly different situation scores lower than a plainer one about the right situation. Learn the shape, then fill it with the prompt's own details.

CELPIP Writing Task 2 questions to practise

There are 16 CELPIP Writing Task 2 questions on this site, one in each free writing test, and every one is an unseen survey written in the 2026 format. They cover a town choosing between a shopping complex and a park, a company choosing a staff wellness benefit, a community centre choosing its evening courses, a school choosing one class trip, a city choosing how to improve its buses, a neighbourhood choosing what to build on an empty lot, and ten more on winter road maintenance, a workplace commute, hospital fundraising, a community newsletter, a library renovation, a pet bylaw, a school meal programme, rural internet, a recycling programme and a bike lane. Each submission comes back with expert feedback against the four rating categories and a model answer.