The tests · CELPIP
What is CELPIP?
CELPIP-General is a computer-delivered English test: four skills — listening, reading, writing, speaking — done in one sitting of just under three hours. Each skill is scored from 1 to 12 on a scale that maps directly to the Canadian Language Benchmarks: a CELPIP 9 is a CLB 9, no conversion table needed. IRCC accepts it for economic immigration, and the English throughout is Canadian — the accents, the spellings, the situations.
New to the scale? What is a CLB score? explains it — and how to find the level your program needs.
If you haven't decided which test to sit yet, start with CELPIP or IELTS General? — that decision deserves its own page. This one is for understanding CELPIP itself.
What the test day looks like
One sitting, four sections, in this order. Timings are from the official test format.
- Listening46–55 minutes · six parts
- Conversations, news items and discussions. The whole passage plays before you see the questions — you can't read them first, so you listen without knowing what will be asked.
- Reading43–56 minutes · four parts
- Everything on screen: correspondence, a diagram to apply, information passages, and viewpoints to compare.
- Writing53 minutes · two tasks
- Task 1 is an email of 150–200 words (about 27 minutes). Task 2 responds to a survey question, also 150–200 words, in 26 minutes — you pick a side and justify it. The on-screen word counter matters: responses well under or over the range lose marks.
- Speaking15 minutes · eight tasks
- You speak into a microphone, recorded, with no examiner in the room. Each task gives you a short prep time, then a timed response — advice, a personal experience, describing a scene, predictions, persuading, and so on.
The email is the task candidates most often get wrong on format rather than English — CELPIP Writing Task 1: email structure and common mistakes covers what the prompt is actually asking for.
The speaking section asks for something different in each of its eight tasks — all eight CELPIP Speaking tasks explained sets out what each one is looking for.
What people find hard about it
Two things, and neither is about your level of English.
The first is speaking to a microphone with nobody responding. If you're used to a human examiner — someone nodding, reacting, filling the silence — talking to a screen throws you. There's no feedback while you speak, and around you a room of other candidates is doing the same thing into their own microphones. Most people adjust; most people I work with need a few goes before it stops feeling strange.
The second is the listening format. The questions only appear after the whole conversation has played, so you can't listen selectively for answers the way IELTS lets you. You have to hold the entire conversation in your head without knowing what will be asked. Candidates switching from other tests notice this most — and prepare for it least.
How I coach it
The same way I coach everything: find what's actually costing you marks, fix that, and practise under the test's real conditions — timed writing inside the word range, speaking to a silent microphone until it stops feeling strange. Among the student reviews there are CELPIP results, including one student who went from about 6 in every section to 11 in listening.
Get your CELPIP writing marked
Send me your email and survey-response tasks and I'll mark them with a CLB estimate for each, back within 24 hours.
Writing feedback — US$25 →Practise speaking to the microphone
A full CELPIP speaking simulation under timed conditions, with feedback on what's costing you marks.
Speaking simulation — US$35 →Find out where you stand on all four skills
I mark your writing before we meet, run a speaking assessment, and give you a CLB estimate and a written plan to your test date.
Full Diagnostic — US$45 →