Writing Task 2
CELPIP Writing Task 2 gives you 26 minutes to respond to a survey question in 150–200 words. The prompt presents a situation with two options - a community deciding between two projects, a company weighing two policies - and asks which one you would choose and why.
Responding to Survey Questions is the second CELPIP-General Writing task. A short survey sets out a situation with two options - a city consulting residents, an employer polling staff - and asks which one you would choose.
It is persuasive writing rather than a comparison. Which option you pick carries no marks at all: everything rests on committing to one of them clearly and supporting that choice well.
The scenarios are civic or workplace decisions that a reasonable person could go either way on. Neither option is designed to be the better one, and no background knowledge is ever required to argue for either.
Give yourself two minutes to read the survey and pick a side. The right option is the one you can support best in English, which is not always the one you would choose in life. Then plan for three: two reasons, with a concrete example or consequence under each. If a reason has nothing beneath it, swap it now rather than discovering the problem mid-paragraph.
Draft for sixteen minutes - a first sentence that states the choice outright, about six minutes on each reason, then a short close that restates the choice without repeating the reasons word for word.
Leave the last five minutes to check that the argument still points one way, that the linking words match the logic they announce, and that the response sits inside 150–200 words.
Practise the decision, not just the paragraphs. Most of what is lost in this task is lost in the first three minutes, by a candidate who cannot commit or who picks the option they believe in rather than the one they can evidence. Set a timer, force the choice early, and spend everything that remains on making one side of the argument properly.
Quick answers about Writing Task 2.
No - pick one and argue for it. You can mention the other in a single concession sentence, such as "While a new library would help students…", but the marks are in how well you develop your own choice, not in balanced coverage.
Not at all. There is no correct answer; what is assessed is the reasoning and the language. Choose whichever option you can support with the most concrete, specific reasons in English - which is not always the one you would pick in real life.
Task 1 is transactional - you write to a person to get something done. Task 2 is persuasive - you write to an organisation to defend an opinion. Task 2 stays formal, needs a clear choice in the first sentence, and rewards linking words that carry an argument.
Twenty-six minutes for 150–200 words, following the 27 minutes allowed for the email, so the Writing section runs 53-60 minutes in total. A workable split is two minutes to choose, three to plan, sixteen to write and five to check.
Yes. Nobody is checking the facts, and a specific invented example is far stronger than a vague true one. Keep the details plausible and consistent with each other - a response that contradicts itself is a coherence problem regardless of where the details came from.
Then choose on language rather than belief: take the option whose reasons you can express most easily, and commit within the first minute. Sitting between the two options is the one choice that genuinely does cost marks.