TPS - CELPIP™ Tips

The following page gives free CELPIP™ strategic tips on the reading, listening, speaking and writing sections.student. It also gives links to tips and free practice in CELPIP™ and good resources in sites YouTube videos and textbooks.

CELPIP™ is no longer considered a new test but it is newer than IELTS and TOEFL so there are fewer resources but there are a growing number of websites and other sources to help you along. The purpose of this site is to not only direct you to the best of them, but also to provide some tips from TPS and build the process of putting them on archived blogs

Free CELPIP™ Websites and Blogs

There are six important CELPIP™ websites that seem to give credible information and give you a lot of detail on the test itself.

The first one is the official CELPIP website, It is an easy site to navigate and is easy to understand. It is the main site for getting books and the latest test location and dates source. It gives a sample from both the General and L&S You will also get a free online sample when you register for a test. CELPIP™ lets your purchase of practice material run for months. See if you can get a hold of someone who has already taken the test because they will still have all their free tests and any purchased tests eligible if they purchased it less than 3 months ago.
The second is the Paragon Testing site called Secure Paragon Testing . Paragon Testing is the one that runs the CELPIP™ and LPI tests but on this site you can find some free practice unlike the official website.
A website blog gives free advice on common CELPIP errors. This one is a start but if you look to the right of the site you’ll see many more
A YouTube channel is the Fast Track ESL, which provides CELPIP™ practice tests
Another YouTube channel called CAREERAXIS has a good list of practice tests to supplement your CELPIP™ preparation.

Webinar Information Sessions

On the free practice section of the Official CELPIP™ site, there are a number of ways to watch free sessions. First download the latest version of adobe and then you can click the links below or just go onto the free practice site to see them all listed

An information session is free upon registration using GoToWebinar
One specific to listening
One specific to reading
One specific to writing
One specific to speaking

Free Pretest

If you are from either Vancouver or Toronto, you can register for a free pretest

CELPIP™ YouTube Videos

CELPIP™ is relatively new but it seems they have relaxed their previous restrictive policies on outside organizations creating creating practice exams. Just as a start, I would recommend you look through the two Paragon tests one for the CELPIP General Test and another for the LS General Test . The Guru Learning Institute puts out a series of CELPIP™ videos. They are not especially brilliant but they are free and can give some useful information. There are a series of videos called Learn English that do have some relevance to CELPIP, although they are more like general English learning. There are a series of videos by Rhico Ricalde that do a nice job of collecting specific skills such as vocabulary for directions and letters. As previously mentioned, if you are looking for practice tests, you can try ones from the Fast Track ESL, and CAREERAXIS.

Textbooks

Paragon offers altogether about 9 study guides and practice tests and you can order them from the offiicial site under Instructional Materials. They are good sources but there are others that you can use in addition to the Paragon books. There is a relatively cheap book for less than $10 that gives Practice questions for the CELPIP™ reading and writing called Practice Questions for the CELPIP Test (Reading & Writing) by Perry Vitalis. There is also a Challenge: CELPIP General by Christina Burnside that was written in 2013. The author acknowledges that the CELPIP™ test went through a revision since, then and is working on a revision, but claims it is still a useful source. You may find it better to try and track this book down in a library instead and see it as a supplement rather than your only source.

CELPIP™ Tip #5 Speaking Tip: How to do Task 1 in the Speaking Exam (Giving Advice)

This is a section that demands 90 seconds of speaking, The only other section that demands this is part 7 (Opinion). The key strategy is to keep the recommendations to two. Here is a process I recommend:

1.Have an social introduction
You are giving advice but you should say hello and start by saying that you have heard that the person is going to do something and you are giving advice.

2.Give recommendation
Make this brief

3.Say why
Give the general reason why this suggestion is a good one. Many test takers forget to do this and quickly jump to the next suggestion but this misses an opportunity to explain the reasons for the suggestion.

4.Say what can happen
This is different from giving the reason. Give the positive consequence of your suggestion. You may phrase it in the conditional tense (Eg If you do some research first, you can avoid many problems in the future)

5.Give concluding advice
These are some concluding tips that might be what the person has to be careful of or just

6.Sociable farewell
Just a goodbye and a wish the person good luck. You could offer to help more in the future.