Task 2 gives you two options and asks which you prefer. Neither is the correct one — the test is not judging your views on shuttle buses. The marks are in the defence, not the position, and the commonest way to fail this task is to refuse to take one.
A response that weighs both options evenly and never lands is an answer with no answer in it. That shape runs at the harshest rule in CELPIP marking:
A response giving insufficient information to assess scores 0 or 1.
Levels 0 and 1 map to no CLB level at all. You need not believe the side you argue. You do have to pick one.
The task
Writing is 53 minutes for 2 tasks — Task 1 an email, Task 2 a survey response (test format). No per-task split is published, so dividing the 53 minutes is yours. There is no preparation clock — the task appears and time runs. Paragon's sample instruction asks for "about 150-200 words", and the screen gives you a timer, a word counter and spell-check (overview).
The prompt
(original AlmiWorld practice prompt)
Bridgeview Community Centre — resident survey
The centre has a one-time $40,000 grant and has narrowed the spending to two options.
Option A — Winter shuttle. A free van on Tuesday and Thursday evenings between the centre, the grocery plaza and the apartment buildings on Ferrier Road, November to March.
Option B — Longer gym hours. Keep the drop-in gym and the two multipurpose rooms open on weeknights until 10 p.m., year-round, instead of 6 p.m.
Choose the option you prefer and explain your reasons. Write about 150–200 words.
Choose fast, and do not choose honestly
Read both options once and ask one question: which one can I make concrete fastest? Not which is better for Bridgeview — which one gives you a street name, a number, a consequence you can describe without inventing anything.
That is a different question from what you think, and it should be. If your real view is Option B but the detail you can picture belongs to Option A, argue A — the four dimensions are properties of the writing, and none can see your opinion. Choosing badly costs little. Choosing slowly costs the response.
The response
I would choose Option A, the winter shuttle, because it solves a problem that nothing else in the centre's budget can reach.
My first reason is access. I live in the taller building on Ferrier Road, and from November to March the walk to the grocery plaza takes about twenty-five minutes each way, along a sidewalk the city clears late in the day. Two of my neighbours are in their seventies, and after the first heavy snow they simply stop going out. A van twice a week would give them back four months of ordinary errands.
My second reason is money. A shuttle runs for five months and then stops, so the grant is spent once. Longer gym hours are a permanent bill for heating and staffing that the centre would have to find again every January.
Option B does answer a real need: people who finish work at six cannot use the centre at all right now. But gym hours can be funded later through a modest membership fee, and a winter van cannot.
For a grant that will not come twice, I would spend it where no other money will go.
193 words, inside the range the instruction asks for.
Read against the four dimensions
Writing is rated on Content/Coherence, Vocabulary, Readability, Task Fulfillment (Performance Standards). Three of the four are shared with Speaking — only the fourth differs.
Content/Coherence. The two reasons differ in kind, not in nouns: access is about who can get somewhere, money is about what the grant leaves behind. Each paragraph announces its job — "My first reason is access", "My second reason is money" — and the concession arrives after both reasons are standing, where it reads as answered rather than as doubt.
Vocabulary. Nothing decorative. The precision is in ordinary nouns used exactly: a one-time grant, a modest membership fee, a permanent bill for heating and staffing. "Very inconvenient" costs the same and shows nothing.
Readability. The official sub-points are "Format and paragraphing; Connectors and transitions; Grammar and sentence structure; Spelling and punctuation". Five short paragraphs, one idea each, with transitions that are load-bearing — because, so, But, and a winter van cannot.
Task Fulfillment. The choice is named in the first six words, defended twice, tested against the alternative, restated at the end. No rater finishes it unsure what this resident wants.
The middle position needs edges
You may land between the options. You may not land nowhere. "It depends on the resident" is not a position. Neither is "both options have advantages and the board should consider the community's needs." Those sentences survive on either side of the survey, which is what makes them worthless.
A middle position with edges rules something out. Fund the shuttle and extend gym hours only to eight, not ten is a position: it says what will not happen, and it needs defending. If your middle answer cannot be argued against, it is not an answer.
What this response is not
It works because of its details, and the details are the part you cannot borrow. Three sentences exist only for this prompt: the twenty-five-minute walk to the plaza, the neighbours in their seventies who stop going out after the first snow, the heating bill that returns every January. On a prompt about library hours they would be nonsense wearing a suit.
There is no structure to reuse either. Choice, reason, reason, concession, close is what this argument happened to need — another prompt needs something else. A memorised skeleton can carry a shape into the exam room. It cannot carry a sidewalk that gets cleared late — and content is what the rubric is looking at.
No band, and why nobody can give one
This page assigns no level. Distrust any page that does. CELPIP publishes no weighting for the four dimensions, no key, and nothing on how two task scores combine into one Writing level. Official sources do not even agree on who marks it — the FAQ says "an AI-human hybrid system", the results page "four to six writing raters", the Score Guidance PDF "at least three certified raters".
What actually costs you
- Weighing both options fairly and never choosing — the shape that risks the floor rule.
- Two reasons that are one reason twice, with different nouns.
- Conceding the other side without answering it.
- Deciding what you truly prefer until only 90 words are left.
Try one
[Answer a survey task →] — one full task, marked, no card required.