What Part 3 actually is
Part 3 is the only part of the Reading test with a fifth option — E, for information that is not stated in the reading. The official study material is explicit: "Choose E if the information is not stated in the reading." Nowhere else in CELPIP Reading can the correct answer be this was never said. You are not only choosing which paragraph a statement belongs to — you are deciding whether it belongs anywhere at all.
The rest is plain: "a four-paragraph informational text about a person, place, event, or process", nine questions, no second text — the only Reading part that is a single passage with no email attached. Register: "formal, educational, descriptive". The difficulty is all in the not-stated decision.
Paragon's published procedure for this part is four steps: use the paragraph topics to find the relevant paragraph, scan it for the information, read that part carefully to check the exact information is there — and "Choose E if the information is not stated in the reading." Paragon does not publish how the four paragraphs are labelled on the real screen, so this page letters them A to D for clarity. Treat those letters as ours, not as the test's.
The failure: treating E as a confession
Under time pressure, "not stated" feels like giving up. Choosing a paragraph feels like reading; choosing E feels like admitting you could not find it. So you scan again, take the paragraph that sounds closest, and place the statement there — onto a claim the text never made.
Then somebody warns you about that and the failure inverts: anything you cannot locate in eight seconds becomes E, because E is where uncertainty goes.
E has the same standing as A, B, C and D, and it is right or wrong for the same reason they are: what the text says. A statement placed in paragraph 2 because paragraph 2 felt related is not a safer answer — it is a wrong answer that took longer.
Worked example (original AlmiWorld practice item)
A. The Rosewood Seed Library occupies one oak cabinet in the reading room of a prairie branch library. Its collection is not books but seed — roughly 240 varieties, held in paper envelopes in the drawers of a card catalogue decommissioned in 1998. Membership is free with a library card.
B. Borrowing follows an unusual procedure. A member takes up to six envelopes a season and records each on a paper slip. No due date is attached. Members are asked instead to grow the seed, let part of the crop mature past the eating stage, and bring back seed from the best plants. In a typical year, about a third of the varieties come back.
C. The collection's value lies in local adaptation. Seed from plants that survived a particular soil, pest year and frost date carries traits suited to that place. Volunteers therefore label every return with its year and neighbourhood. Varieties that fail repeatedly are retired from the drawers.
D. The model has since been copied by four other branches, and the collection is now consulted by growers outside the region. Two paid staff hours a week support the work; everything else is done by members.
Statement 1: The library's seed is kept in furniture that once served another purpose.
Paragraph A. No content word of the statement appears in the passage — but a decommissioned card catalogue holding seed envelopes is exactly that. A paraphrase you have to translate is still stated.
Statement 2: Most members return seed at the end of the growing season.
E — the item that decides your score. Paragraph B has the vocabulary, the timing, the subject and a number. Everything except the claim.
- B is wrong because the passage says members are asked to bring seed back, and that about a third of the varieties come back. A third of the varieties is not most members: one counts varieties, the other people — and a third is not most either way. Two small drifts, both fatal.
- A is wrong — it covers what the collection is and who may join, not what members do.
- C is wrong even though returns appear there. Paragraph C labels returns; it never counts them.
- D is wrong — it is about the model spreading and who staffs it.
Statement 3: The library is funded by an annual grant from the city.
Also E. Paragraph D says two paid staff hours a week support the work. Paid hours imply a budget, a budget implies a source, a municipal grant is the obvious source — and the passage never says it.
That is the distinction the whole part is built on. Implied strongly is not stated. A paragraph can leave you certain of something it never said — that is competent writing doing its job. Your task is not to report what a careful reader would conclude, but what is on the page.
Two of the three are E. Nothing tells you how many of the nine will be — a quota of one or two came from you, not from the test.
The shape that works
- Read all four paragraphs first, then label them. One phrase each — what it is, how borrowing works, why local seed matters, where it spread. That map turns nine statements into nine lookups.
- Reduce each statement to its claim, then hunt the claim, not the vocabulary. Subject, verb, quantity. Shared words are how the trap is built — the paragraph that sounds nearest is a candidate, not an answer.
- Check quantities word by word — most, some, all, about a third, usually, must, may, asked to. A scope shift you read past is how a nearly-stated statement catches you.
- Answer every one. There are no points deducted for wrong answers, so a blank scores what a wrong guess scores. Reading is timed per part and "you can't go back to a previous part."
The E procedure: two checks, both required
Before you may choose E, you must have:
- named the gap between the nearest paragraph and the statement — a quantity, a subject, a cause, a modal verb. "I could not find it" is not a gap. If you cannot say what is different, you have not checked.
- confirmed the claim is not sitting elsewhere in other words. Statements get paraphrased; missing vocabulary is evidence of nothing.
Before you may reject E, you must have:
- found the sentence, not the topic. Point at it. A paragraph being about the subject is not the same as it containing the claim.
- checked that you are not supplying the link. Did the text say this, or did I finish it? If the connection runs through a step you added, the answer is E.
What actually costs you the mark
- Placing a statement in the paragraph that shares the most words with it.
- Reading "asked to" as "do", "may" as "must", "about a third" as "most".
- Choosing E because you ran out of patience, not because you found the discrepancy.
- Refusing E because two of your answers are already E.
- Answering an inference. The text made you believe it; that is not the text saying it.
- Leaving a statement blank. Nothing is deducted for a wrong answer, so a blank is a mark declined.
Try one
[Try Reading Part 3 →] — one full task, marked, no card required.