CELPIP Writing Task 2 Template: How to Respond to a Survey

CELPIP Writing Task 2 gives you 26 minutes to write 150 to 200 words. You read a short survey about a local issue, choose one of two options, and explain why. No email format is needed, so there is no greeting and no sign-off. Paragon rates your answer on four things: Content/Coherence, Vocabulary, Readability, and Task Fulfillment.

Practice this on a real Task 2 prompt and get an AI score in minutes.
Open the Task 2 survey question bank

Most Task 2 advice you will find online tells you to write a formal opinion essay. Paragon Testing, which owns and administers CELPIP, tells you the opposite in its own study materials. That single gap is why so many strong English speakers stall at a 7 or an 8 on this task, and it is what this page fixes.

How long is CELPIP Writing Task 2 and how many words?

You get 26 minutes and 150 to 200 words. Task 1 gets 27 minutes, so the two tasks are not the same length, and the whole Writing component runs 53 minutes.

Those numbers come from Paragon directly. Its CELPIP-General Overview Study Pack, published at celpip.ca, states "26 minutes to complete" and gives the length as 150 to 200 words for Task 2, and its Writing Pro: Target 9+ Study Pack puts it plainly: you have 27 minutes for Task 1 and 26 minutes for Task 2.

On word count, people want a hard number for how far they can stray. There isn't one. Paragon's published guidance is that you have "a little bit of room to be under or over," but your score "may suffer if you are significantly over or under." Any blog quoting a precise buffer like 135 to 220 words invented it.

Here is the more useful anchor. Paragon publishes real rated Task 2 responses, and its Level 10 sample is 170 words. Its Level 9 sample is 184 words. Neither one is near 200. High scores live in the middle of the range, because the extra 20 words at the end are usually where people repeat themselves and make mistakes.

Aim for about 180 and stop.

The screen gives you basic editing tools, an automatic word counter, and a spell check. Paragon does warn that "it is sometimes difficult to choose the right word when the spelling checker offers you a choice," which is a polite way of saying the spell check will flag a word and then hand you five options with no help picking one. It catches spelling only. It will not catch affect where you meant effect, and it will not catch a verb that disagrees with its subject.

What is the CELPIP Writing Task 2 template?

Four parts: your choice, reason A with an example, reason B with an example, and a close that acknowledges the other side. Four paragraphs, one blank line between each.

That layout is doing work for you before the rater reads a word. Paragraphing sits inside Readability, one of the four scored dimensions, and a rater who has to hunt through a wall of text for your structure is a rater you have already made work harder than necessary.

Two of those four parts are not just my preference. Paragon's own Task 2 strategy sheet says to "start with an opinion statement," to "end with a concluding statement," and to "compare your choice to the other choice." Parts 1, 4 and the nod are the test owner's advice, not a template someone invented.

Where reasons come from

You need two reasons that genuinely differ. "It helps families" and "it helps parents with young children" is one reason written twice, and it costs you under Content/Coherence.

Pick any two rows from this grid, as long as they are different rows.

Where examples come from

This is the step people freeze on. You have never lived in a building with a delivery policy, so what do you write?

You are not being fact-checked. Paragon's guidance is to "mention real places, people, and situations to make details more concrete and vivid," and a small plausible detail does that job perfectly well. What is being scored is whether you can turn an abstract claim into something specific.

A detail counts if it has at least one of these: a time, a number, a place, or a specific person.

What are the two Task 2 prompt shapes?

Two-option prompts ask you to pick between A and B. Agree/disagree prompts give you one proposal and ask whether you support it. The template does not change between them.

Most preparation only covers the first shape, which is fine right up until you meet the second one on test day with 26 minutes on the clock.

Shape 1, two-option. Should delivery drivers leave orders at the lobby desk, or bring them to each door? **Shape 2, agree/disagree. The community centre should extend its weekday hours until 9:00 p.m. Do you agree or disagree?

Only two things differ.

Everything in between is identical. Learn one map and read the prompt carefully enough to know which shape you are in.

A note on where this comes from: Paragon describes Task 2 as choosing between two options. The agree/disagree framing is my own observation from the prompts my students actually report seeing, not something Paragon publishes. Prepare for both and you cannot be surprised.

How is CELPIP Writing Task 2 scored?

Paragon rates Writing on four dimensions: Content/Coherence, Vocabulary, Readability, and Task Fulfillment. The rating is holistic, which means there is no points formula and no fixed number of marks per dimension. Paragon publishes the four and what sits inside each one, and does not publish weights.

That table is Paragon's Writing Test Performance Standards, reproduced from its Writing Pro: Target 9+ Study Pack and its 2026 CELPIP-General Overview Study Pack at celpip.ca.

Two things in it surprise people.

Grammar is not its own score. It sits inside Readability, alongside spelling, punctuation and paragraphing. A grammatically perfect answer with no paragraph breaks and no transitions can still lose Readability marks.

Word count is scored under Task Fulfillment. Not as a separate penalty, but as one of four factors alongside relevance, completeness and tone. Being significantly short is a Task Fulfillment problem, the same category as ignoring half the prompt.

If you have seen "Coherence and Cohesion" or "Lexical Resource" on a CELPIP page, ignore it

Those are IELTS terms, and they turn up constantly on CELPIP prep sites, including on an earlier version of this page. CELPIP does not use them. There is no CELPIP dimension called Coherence and Cohesion, no standalone Grammar score, and no Lexical Resource. If a resource is using IELTS vocabulary to describe CELPIP scoring, it is describing a different test, and you should be careful about what else it gets wrong.

For how these four dimensions translate into a CELPIP Level and a CLB (Canadian Language Benchmark) number, see how CELPIP Writing scores map to CLB. CELPIP Levels and CLB levels run one to one from 2 through 12.

Should you write Task 2 like an email or an essay?

Neither. Paragon's Task 2 strategy sheet gives two instructions that most prep material ignores: "Don't write an academic essay," and, on format, "No need to use email format here."

Both appear in Paragon's own published study materials at celpip.ca, the first in the Writing Pro: Target 9+ Study Pack and the second in the 2026 CELPIP-General Overview Study Pack. Read them together and the target register is clear. You are a person answering a survey about your own street, your own building, or your own workplace. Not a consultant filing a report.

This matters more than any template line, because the essay register is the single most common way a strong English speaker caps their own score. An answer can be grammatically flawless, correctly structured and exactly 180 words, and still stall, because it reads like a memo instead of a person.

"Temperature degradation" just means the food gets cold. The longer phrase is not more advanced. It is only heavier, and reaching for heavy words at speed is how small errors creep in. Vocabulary is scored on precision and fit, not difficulty.

The padding diagnostic

Run this over your own draft. Every pattern below is a symptom of writing to impress rather than to communicate.

The test: read your sentence out loud. Would you say it to a friend describing the same situation? If not, rewrite it in the words you would actually use.

On greetings and sign-offs

Paragon says email format is not needed. That is not the same as forbidden, and to be accurate about it, two of Paragon's own published high-scoring Task 2 samples do open with a greeting.

My recommendation is still to skip it. Open with your opinion instead. You have 180 words, a greeting and a sign-off cost you roughly ten of them, and they buy you nothing on any of the four dimensions. Spend those ten words on a concrete detail instead.

CELPIP Writing Task 2 sample answers

Six answers below, three of each prompt shape. Each one states its word count and the two angles it uses, so you can see the machinery rather than just the output.

Read them for structure, not for phrases to memorize. A rater who has seen the same sentence four hundred times is not impressed by the four hundred and first.

Sample 1: Two-option, transit (169 words)

Prompt. Your city can add more bus-only lanes or reduce bus fares by 10%. Choose one and explain why it helps commuters more.

I support adding more bus-only lanes, because they cut travel time and make service reliable. Price matters, but people stop using buses when trips take too long or the schedule cannot be trusted.

First, dedicated lanes keep buses moving during rush hour. On Main Street, a trip that should take 20 minutes often becomes 40 because buses sit behind single-occupant cars. A bus lane would let them bypass that queue and stay on schedule.

Second, faster and more predictable trips bring in new riders. Commuters plan around time, not small savings. If the ride is quicker, more students and workers will leave the car at home, which reduces traffic for everyone.

A 10% fare cut does help people who already ride, and for someone on a tight budget that is real money every month. But a cheaper ticket does not make the bus arrive. When buses run late, people miss classes and shifts, and a discount does not repair that. For these reasons, bus-only lanes deliver the bigger benefit.

Angles: time and reliability, then people affected. The nod concedes that the fare cut genuinely helps someone specific, limits it, and redirects.

Sample 2: Agree/disagree, workplace (176 words)

Prompt. Your employer proposes allowing staff to work from home two days a week. Statement: "The company should allow two work-from-home days." Do you agree or disagree?

I agree that the company should allow two work-from-home days. The main reason is that the office day and the productive day are not the same thing for everyone.

First, quiet time is hard to find in an open office. Work that needs concentration, like writing reports and checking figures, gets broken up by interruptions every few minutes. Two days at home would give people a stretch of focused time without changing their total hours.

Second, the commute is a real cost. Many staff spend over an hour a day travelling, which is time and money spent on nothing productive. Removing that twice a week gives people back most of a working day each month.

Of course, some work genuinely needs people in the same room, and new staff learn far faster sitting beside someone experienced than they do over a video call. That is a fair concern, but it argues for agreeing which two days everyone is in the office, not for scrapping the idea. For these reasons, two days at home is worth trying.

Angles: practicality, then time and money. Only the opening line and the direction of the nod changed from Sample 1.

Sample 3: Two-option, parks (162 words)

Prompt. Your neighbourhood association has money for one improvement to the local park: more benches, or a new washroom building. Which do you support?

I support building the washroom, because it decides whether people can stay in the park at all.

First, the current single washroom cannot handle a busy weekend. At the summer concert in July, the line by the playground ran about 15 minutes, and I watched three families with small children pack up and leave before the music finished. Benches would not have kept any of them there.

Second, a proper washroom keeps the park usable in the cold months. Right now the portable unit is closed from November, so the walking path sits empty all winter even on clear days. Older neighbours in particular will not walk a loop that has nowhere to stop.

More benches would be genuinely pleasant, and anyone who has carried a toddler across that field knows the value of somewhere to sit. But a bench only improves a visit you were already able to make. For these reasons, the washroom is the better use of the money.

Angles: fairness and access, then reliability.

Sample 4: Agree/disagree, library (160 words)

Prompt. Your city library is considering staying open until 9:00 p.m. on weekdays instead of closing at 6:00 p.m. Statement: "The library should extend its weekday hours." Do you agree or disagree?

I agree that the library should stay open until 9:00 p.m., because the current closing time locks out the people who need it most.

First, most shift workers and newcomers finish work around 6:00 p.m. By the time they arrive the doors are shut. My neighbour is studying for a licensing exam and has one quiet place to do it, and three evenings a week she gets there ten minutes too late.

Second, later hours would spread the crowd out. Between 4:00 and 6:00 every computer is taken and there is a wait for the printers, while the study rooms sit empty at lunchtime. Adding three evening hours moves some of that pressure off the late afternoon.

Longer hours do cost more in staffing, and that money has to come from somewhere in a tight budget. But a building that is closed when working people are free is not really serving them. For these reasons, I support the extended hours.

Angles: people affected, then fairness and access.

Sample 5: Two-option, apartment building (158 words)

Prompt. Your building is choosing a new delivery policy: drivers leave all orders at the lobby desk, or drivers bring orders to each apartment door. Which do you support?

I support keeping deliveries at the lobby desk, because it is the only version that works when nobody is home.

First, door delivery assumes someone is there to answer. Most people on my floor work until at least 5:00 p.m., so a package left in a hallway sits unattended for hours. Two were taken from the seventh floor last winter, and neither was recovered.

Second, a single collection point is far easier to run. The desk staff already sign for mail, so adding parcels costs the building nothing, while door delivery means letting a different driver into the residential floors several times a day.

Door delivery is undeniably better for anyone who struggles with stairs or heavy boxes, and that is a real group of people in this building, not a small one. But the desk can hold a box for someone and bring it up on request. For these reasons, the lobby desk is the safer choice.

Angles: safety, then practicality.

Sample 6: Agree/disagree, city centre (168 words)

Prompt. Your city is considering closing the four downtown blocks of Main Street to cars every Sunday. Statement: "Main Street should be closed to cars on Sundays." Do you agree or disagree?

I agree that Main Street should close to cars on Sundays, because the street is worth more to the city as a space than as a road.

First, Sunday traffic there is light and the noise is not. Two lanes of cars run past cafes with outdoor seating that nobody uses, and the exhaust and engine noise are the reason. Closing the road for one day turns four blocks of asphalt into the largest public space downtown at no construction cost.

Second, the shops would gain rather than lose. When the city closed the same stretch for the food festival in May, several owners said it was their best day of the year. People who walk past a window stop; people driving past it do not.

The one group with a fair objection is drivers who use Main Street to reach the hospital, and a Sunday closure cannot simply ignore them. But two parallel routes already exist one block over. For these reasons, I support the Sunday closure.

Angles: environment, then money.

Want the whole thing on one page you can print?
Download the free CELPIP Writing Task 2 template PDF: the four-part map, both prompt shapes, the angle grid, plug lines, two annotated samples, and the self-score rubric.

How should you spend the 26 minutes?

My recommendation is 3 minutes planning, 18 minutes writing, and 5 minutes checking. Paragon's own recommendation is slightly different, and both work, so here is each one plainly.

Paragon suggests spending "around 4-5 minutes planning each response" and "around 3 minutes checking your response after you write." That is a real alternative from the test owner, and if you plan slowly and edit fast, use it.

I push the planning shorter and the checking longer for one reason: almost nobody loses marks for a thin plan, and almost everybody loses marks in the last paragraph they wrote in a hurry. Neither split is official. Paragon publishes no required breakdown of the 26 minutes, so this is a coaching choice and you should take whichever one matches how you work.

The 30-second rule on picking a side is the part I would not bend. There is no correct answer, and nobody is scoring your opinion. Ask only this: which side can I give two concrete examples for, right now? Choose that one, even if you personally prefer the other, and do not reopen the question at minute twelve.

What mistakes cap your Task 2 score?

The three that cost the most marks are treating it like an email, arguing both sides equally, and writing in an essay register. Here is the full list with the fix.

No clear choice
❌ "Both options have advantages and the city should consider carefully."
✅ "I support bus-only lanes because they cut travel time."

Treating it like an email
❌ "Dear Sir or Madam, … Kind regards, Amir."
✅ No greeting, no sign-off. Open with your opinion. This is Task 1's job, not Task 2's.

Essay tone
❌ "In summation, the aforementioned proposals exhibit considerable merit."
✅ "For these reasons, bus lanes help more people."

Reasons with no support
❌ "It is cheaper, cleaner, and easier."
✅ "It is faster in rush hour. The 5:40 bus regularly arrives after 6:00, so riders miss the transfer."

Two reasons that are really one
❌ "It helps families." plus "It helps parents with children."
✅ Pick two different rows from the angle grid.

Arguing both sides equally
❌ "Lanes are good, but fares are also good, and both help people."
✅ Commit to one. The other side appears only in the closing nod.

A nod that collapses
❌ "Of course, extra parking is also very useful for visitors and would help local businesses, and there are good reasons to support it too."
✅ "Free evening parking does help visitors, but residents need somewhere to park every night, not just on event nights."

Point form
❌ Three bullet points instead of a paragraph.
✅ Full sentences and paragraphs. Paragon's Task 2 guidance says to avoid list and point form outright.

A conclusion that repeats everything
❌ Three sentences summarising both reasons again.
✅ One line. You have 180 words. Spend them on evidence, not recap.

The closing nod, in three moves

The nod is the part people cut when they run short, and it is the wrong thing to cut. Paragon lists "compare your choice to the other choice" under convincing support, which means acknowledging the alternative earns credit under Content/Coherence and Task Fulfillment both.

Concede → Limit → Redirect

1. Concede. Name the other side's real point. "Admittedly, some residents worry about security."
2. Limit. Show it is smaller or solvable. "But that is fixable. Check driver ID, or set delivery hours."
3. Redirect. Return to your choice. "…without ending a service people depend on."

Two or three sentences, never more. This is a closing note, not a second essay.

Universal sentence starters (the skeleton)

Mix and match to build your paragraphs. These are scaffolding for practice, not lines to memorize word for word.

Compared with the previous version of this table, the padded openers are gone. "After careful consideration, I strongly support," "the most compelling reason," "cannot be overstated" and "I strongly urge" all fail the padding diagnostic above, so they are no longer here.

Universal argument themes (the meat)

Vocabulary by topic, for when your mind goes blank at minute four. Use the plainest word that is precise, not the biggest one on the row.

The verb columns changed in this revision. "Optimize," "foster," "facilitate," "cultivate" and "revitalize" are gone, because they are the corporate-verb row of the padding diagnostic. A rater reading "optimizes municipal spending" sees someone reaching. A rater reading "saves the city money" sees someone who knows what they mean.

Ready to write one?
Open the Task 2 survey question bank and get an AI score on your response in minutes. Free users get a free practice test in every section, plus the CELPIP Level Test, which returns one AI-scored Writing and one AI-scored Speaking result. Unlimited AI scoring comes with Pro.

For the full method, the drills and a live rebuild of one answer from a 6 to a 10, work through the CELPIP Writing course, Section 5. More practice at CELPIP Writing practice.