Vocabulary for CELPIP Writing

Candidates preparing vocabulary for CELPIP writing almost always prepare the wrong thing: long lists of impressive adjectives. The criterion is choice, suitability, range and precision, weighted at 20 per cent of the band, and a rare word used approximately loses marks twice, once here and once under Readability. What actually moves this criterion is a small number of functional groups you can reach for without thinking.

The five groups CELPIP writing keeps asking for

• Softening a request. I would be grateful if, would it be possible to, I wonder whether you might. Task 1 asks for a favour or a remedy on most prompts, and blunt requests cost tone marks.
• Conceding a point. I appreciate that, I understand why, that said, even so. This is the move that most reliably lifts a Task 2 answer, and it needs three or four reliable phrases.
• Sequencing. first, at that point, once, by the time, after which. Several Task 1 prompts ask for an ordered account, and vague sequencing reads as confusion rather than as style.
• Quantifying carefully. roughly, just over, no more than, at least. Both tasks hand you numbers, and precision about numbers is precision.
• Naming feelings without exaggeration. awkward, reluctant, relieved, uneasy. Informal prompts often turn on a difficult feeling, and the register does not survive a thesaurus.

Notice that none of these are hard words. They are exact words. That is what precision means in the descriptors, and it is what a marker is looking for.

The test that needs all five

Task 1 is an informal email to your sister Leena, who is getting married in Kelowna in September and has asked you to give a speech. You have said yes, but a work commitment means you cannot arrive until the morning of the wedding itself. You also want to ask her something she may find difficult: whether the speech should mention your father, who died last year. The bullets ask for the day and exact landing time of your flight and how long you can stay; a description of what you plan to say, roughly how long it will run, and a question about where it falls in the schedule; and the question about your father, raised carefully and in a way that makes it easy for her to say no.

That third bullet is the whole reason this test is here. Raising a bereavement with a bride, warmly, in about sixty words, without either flattening it or dramatising it, is a pure vocabulary and register problem.

Task 2 is the Community Newsletter Survey. A residents association has $9,000 a year to keep 1,400 households informed. Option A is a printed quarterly newsletter, twelve pages mailed to all 1,400 households four times a year at $8,600, reaching everyone including residents with no internet, but carrying news that can be three months old. Option B is a weekly email and text alert, free to send and arriving within minutes, but reaching only the 620 households that have supplied a contact, leaving about 780 hearing nothing, and needing a volunteer to write it every week.

CELPIP Writing format: tasks, length and time

How Vocabulary is scored

Vocabulary carries 20 per cent of the writing band, alongside Content and Coherence at 30, Readability at 25 and Task Fulfilment at 25. Your report bands each of the four separately, so you can see whether vocabulary is actually your ceiling or whether it is something else wearing its clothes. If you want a word list to work from, the CELPIP vocabulary PDF is free.