CELPIP Writing questions: Practice Test 5

CELPIP writing questions get harder in one particular way. The vocabulary stays ordinary and the situations stay everyday; what grows is the number of things a single answer has to do at once. Test 5 is the hard end of the first six, and both of its questions are hard for that reason rather than for any word in them.

The Task 1 question: part-time study at Riverbend College

You are enrolled full time in the Business Administration programme at Riverbend College, starting in September, and you have already paid the full-time tuition deposit. Your employer has just offered you a permanent position that requires you to work weekday mornings. You would rather move to part-time study than withdraw, and the email goes to the programme coordinator.

The three bullets ask you to identify your programme, your student number and the exact start date of the term; to explain the situation and ask to switch to part-time evening study; and to ask what happens to the deposit you have already paid while acknowledging the trouble this causes the college. That is three different jobs in one email. One is administrative, one is a request that benefits you, and one is close to an apology, and all three have to hold a formal register inside 200 words.

The Task 2 question: the Public Transit Survey

Your city has $6 million a year to improve its bus system and enough for only one improvement. Option A is longer service hours: buses until 2:00 a.m. instead of 11:00 p.m. and every route running on Sundays, with the fare left at $3.50, which mainly helps shift workers and people travelling in the evening. Option B is lower fares: $3.50 down to $2.00 a trip and monthly passes cut by a third, with service hours and frequency exactly as they are, which mainly helps daily riders and low-income families.

This question is hard because both options are good and they help different people. An answer that praises public transit in general has not answered it at all. The examinable move is to name whose problem you are solving, say why that group has the stronger claim on the $6 million, and concede what the other group loses when you spend it.

What makes a writing question hard

• Bullets that carry two instructions. The third bullet here asks about the deposit and asks you to acknowledge the inconvenience. Answer one of them and the bullet is half covered.
• A reader with power over the outcome. The coordinator can refuse, which rules out demanding and rules out grovelling, and the narrow band left between them is where the marks are.
• A request that benefits only you. Asking for a change you want, from the person it inconveniences, is the hardest register the section sets.
• Numbers you are expected to use. $6 million, $3.50, $2.00 and a third off a monthly pass are the evidence. A survey answer naming none of them is arguing from nothing.
• A concession that has to be real. Naming the loss your own choice imposes and answering it is a high-band move. Pretending there is no loss is a visible one.

What the feedback tells you about a hard question

Both answers come back banded separately on Content and Coherence, Vocabulary, Readability and Task Fulfilment, which is what makes a hard test worth sitting rather than merely discouraging. A question like this one usually fails on one criterion rather than across the board, and the report names which: a half-covered bullet is Task Fulfilment, a paragraph that argues in a circle is Content and Coherence, and a formal register that slipped partway through is both at once.