Scoring & What “Good” Looks Like

You can write an email with no grammar mistakes at all and still get a 7.

That surprises people, and it is the most useful thing to understand before you study anything else. Your writing is read by two examiners, and they score it on four areas. Inside those four areas there are sixteen factors. Grammar is one of the sixteen.

So if grammar is the only thing you have been practising, you have been polishing about six percent of your score.

The four areas and the sixteen factors

Four areas. Four factors each. All four areas carry the same weight.

Find grammar in that table. It sits in the third row, sharing Readability with three other things. A test taker who writes clean sentences that answer the wrong question, in the wrong tone, with no examples, has lost most of three areas and part of the fourth.

One word deserves attention: precision. Not impressive. The Vocabulary row asks whether your words are exact, natural and correct. It does not ask whether they are difficult. That single distinction is why so many people who study long word lists go backwards.

🎥 The full breakdown, with the official source (17:10)

This page lists the sixteen factors. The video shows you where the list comes from, then walks a real email through it twice, once written to impress and once written with real detail, so you can watch the score move.

Jump to: 1:16 two examiners, four areas, sixteen factors · 5:15 the "impressive" email that scores low · 7:04 the same email with real details · 8:06 why easier words score higher · 15:09 all eight rules recapped

The eight rules from the official study pack

The company that writes CELPIP publishes what it wants you to do. It is free, it is on their website, and almost nobody reads it. These eight instructions come from that publication.

1. Do not copy words from the question

Paragon says this three times in their own documents, which tells you how much it matters. Copying the prompt's wording shows the examiner nothing about your English, because those words were not yours.

Pick three words from the prompt before you start and promise yourself you will not reuse them. Find your own word for each one.

2. Use real places, people and numbers

Not "the service was disappointing." Say which service, on what day, and what happened. A named place and a real number tell the examiner you can produce specific language. A general sentence could have been written by anyone about anything.

3. End a Task 1 email with a concluding statement

An email that simply stops is incomplete. Finish with a line that closes the message properly, usually a clear request with a timeframe, or a short line about what happens next.

4. Never use point form in Task 2

No bullet points, no dashes, no numbered lists. The survey answer must be written as full paragraphs. This one is easy to break by accident when you are running out of time and start listing your reasons.

5. Give reasons, not suggestions

If the task asks why you chose something, explain why. Do not slide into telling the reader what they should do instead. Answer the question that was asked.

6. Do not write an academic essay

Task 2 is a survey response from a resident, an employee or a member of the public. It is not a university paper. Formal essay openings and heavy academic vocabulary work against you here.

7. Do not change the information you were given

If the prompt says the class is on Tuesday, it is on Tuesday. Changing a detail, even a small one, is a relevance problem, and relevance is one of the sixteen factors.

8. Track the mistakes you repeat

This is the study method rather than a writing rule. Most people make the same three or four mistakes over and over. Write them down. Check for those specific ones every time you finish an answer, instead of reading through and hoping you notice something.

Source. These eight rules are drawn from Paragon Testing Enterprises' free publication CELPIP Writing Pro: Target 9+ Study Pack, available on celpip.ca. CELTESTPIP is an independent practice resource and is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or approved by Paragon Testing Enterprises. CELPIP is a registered trademark of Paragon Testing Enterprises.

What each area asks of you

Content and Coherence

Do you have enough ideas, are they any good, are they in a sensible order, and did you back them up.

The fourth part is where most answers lose ground. A reason with nothing behind it is an opinion. "The gym is often too busy" is an opinion. "On weekday evenings after six, every treadmill is taken and people wait about fifteen minutes" is content, and it took eleven extra words.

Vocabulary

Natural, wide enough, exact, and correct.

Wide enough does not mean rare. It means you are not using the same three words on repeat. Exact means the word you chose is the one that means what you meant. Correct means you used it the way English actually uses it.

If you cannot use a word confidently, it is working against you rather than for you, because a word used slightly wrong tells an examiner you are not in control of it.

Readability

Paragraphs, connectors, grammar, spelling and punctuation.

Two of those four are about how your answer looks on the page rather than how correct it is. Put a blank line between your paragraphs. Use plain connectors such as because, so, for example and as a result, and use them once or twice per paragraph rather than in every sentence.

Then grammar, and then spelling and punctuation, both of which you should check yourself rather than trusting the spell check, because it will happily approve there when you meant their.

Task Fulfillment

Relevance, completeness, tone, word count.

Relevance is whether you answered the question they asked. Completeness is whether you covered every part of it. Tone is whether your voice suits the person reading. Word count is whether you stayed near the range.

Tone is scored here, formally, as one of the sixteen. Task 1 is either formal, when you write to a manager, a company or an office, or informal, when you write to a friend, a neighbour or family. There is no safe middle setting. Writing business language to a friend costs you as much as writing slang to a company, and it is the more common mistake among people who already write well.

→ Lesson 9 covers these four in detail: Task Fulfillment and Tone Control

🎥 Short version, if you have five minutes (4:42)

A quick walk through what examiners look for in both tasks, with a demonstration on the practice platform. Useful the night before your test, when you want the checklist and not the full explanation.

What "good" looks like

The same message, written twice. Nothing in the second version is harder. It is more exact, and it has real detail in it.

Around a 6

I am writing about a problem with my course. The class was cancelled and nobody told me. This was very bad and caused me many problems. I want you to fix this situation. Please contact me soon.

Around a 10

I am writing about the Thursday evening photography class, which did not run on 14 March. No notice was posted and no email was sent, so eleven of us waited outside the studio for half an hour.

The class was cancelled twice last term as well, and each time we found out only by arriving. I travel forty minutes for it, so a cancelled evening costs me the whole trip.

Could you please add the cancelled session to the end of the term, and set up an email alert for future changes? I would appreciate a reply by Friday so I can plan my travel.

Read them against the table:

Not one difficult word was added. Everything that improved came from being exact.

Note the last row. Even the better version is short. Landing inside the range is its own factor, and a strong answer that stops at 105 words has left marks behind, so the next job on that draft is to keep adding real detail until the counter reaches 150 at least.

The practical numbers

Task 1, the email, gives you about 27 minutes. Task 2, the survey, gives you about 26. Both want 150 to 200 words, and the screen shows a word counter and a basic spell check.

Do not spend all of it writing. Plan for about five minutes, write for about eighteen, and keep four minutes at the end to check your work. The checking time is not extra. It protects two of the four areas, because a missed bullet is a Task Fulfillment loss and a typo is a Readability loss, and both of those are cheap to fix and expensive to leave.

→ The full rhythm is in Timing Drills and Editing Routines.

Run this before you submit

Built on the sixteen, so you can see which area each item protects.

Content and Coherence

• Every point I made has one real detail behind it

• The order makes sense to someone reading it once

• No idea repeated in different words

Vocabulary

• No word here that I am unsure how to use

• I did not reuse the prompt's wording

• I did not use the same key word four times

Readability

• Blank line between paragraphs

• Connectors used once or twice a paragraph, not in every sentence

• I read it myself for the words spell check cannot catch

Task Fulfillment

• I answered the question that was actually asked

• Every part of the prompt is covered

• Formal or informal, decided on purpose and consistent from greeting to sign off

• Between 150 and 200 words on the counter

Where to go next

The fastest way to find which of the four is costing you most is to write one answer and have it scored against all four:

• Write a Task 1 email and get feedback on all four areas
• Write a Task 2 survey and get feedback on all four areas

Then start rule 8. Write down what came back, and check for those same things next time.