CELPIP Listening Test Format and Scoring

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CELPIP Listening Test Format and Scoring

CELPIP Listening section is excellently designed to test candidates’ listening abilities. This section is having six different parts and one practice test. Candidates have around 6 minutes to listen and answer to each part and the passage is played just once. You must listen to each passage very carefully as you can’t replay the passage. The number of questions vary for each part.

Time Duration: 47-55 Minutes

In all, there are 38 questions in this section.
There is one Practice Task and six-part as follows:

Part 1: Listening to Problem Solving

Part 2: Listening to a Daily Life Conversation

Part 3: Listening for Information

Part 4: Listening to a News Item

Part 5: Listening to a Discussion

Part 6: Listening to Viewpoints

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Practice Task

Practice Task will offer you one practice question. You will hear a short statement first and then you will be given 30 seconds to choose the sentence that is relevant to the statement. The marks of the question are not added in your final score.

Part 1: Listening to Problem Solving

This part comprises of conversation between two or more people. Generally, people are asking for directions in this section. You should pay attention to the conversation because you may be asked questions on the address they are looking for, or sometimes questions on the response of the people who are asked about places, may also be asked.

You will hear three conversations in this part. Each conversation will be followed by 2-3 questions. There are total 8 questions in this section. The first conversation is of around 1 to 1.5 minutes followed by 3 questions. Generally, the first question is to select a picture of the place, where a person is looking to reach and you are given 30 seconds to select the right or relevant picture. Similarly, two more conversations of around 1.5 minutes followed questions are presented and again you are given 30 seconds for each question.

Task 2: Listening to a Daily Life Conversation

Daily life conversation, as the name suggests, in this part you will hear a conversation between two colleagues or friends. Generally, people share their problems with each other, so pay attention to every detail of the conversation, like what was the conversation was about etc. to answer the questions. This part is having only one conversation of around 2 minutes, followed by 5 questions. You are again given 30 seconds to choose the best answer from the given four options.

Task 3: Listening for Information

In this, a conversation of duration around 2.5 minutes is played, followed by 6 questions. Each question is provided with four options to choose the best one. This section includes conversation in the form of information on a specific subject or field of research. This part is more of an interview with some expert. Students are asked questions based on the information provided by the expert, whom you will hear during the conversation. Here questions are not written, only the four options or choices are written on the screen. You will hear the questions one by one.

Now to score well in this particular task, you must keep the following things in mind:
1. Pay attention to the people talking or you can say discussing.
2. What is the problem or subject they are discussing?
3. Listen to the details of the information because you might be asked question for that particular detail.
4. You should pay attention to the place where the discussion is taking places and also about the places they are talking about.

Task 4: Listening to a News Item

You will hear news item, which is around 1.5 minutes long. Once the conversation is over, 5 questions appear with drop-down menus. Students need to choose the most appropriate option, to complete the statement. Total of 3 minutes time is allocated to answer all the questions. A person man or woman will read the news, just like you hear it on the radio or television and then the question will be asked.

Part 5: Listening to a Discussion

This part is different from all the parts in a way, that instead of having an audio clip, this one has a video clip. This video clip is 1.5 to 2 minutes long and you will find few people talking or discussing something. You will have to pay attention to what they are discussing and in the end, you will be asked eight questions related to this video clip. Eight questions appear in this section after the video is over and you are given 4 minutes to answer all these questions. So again average time to answer each question in this section is 30 seconds. You will answer each question by selecting the best answer from the given drop-down menus.

Part 6: Listening to Viewpoints

This is the last part of the listening section. In this section, a person will give his or her opinion or viewpoints on a particular subject or thing. You need to pay full attention and get notes of information you will get. You will hear 3 minutes long report in this section. Six questions will appear with drop-down menus. Again you will choose the way to complete each statement. In this section report on various issues are heard, you need to focus on the subject of the report and data being provided in the report to answer the answers correctly.

How CELPIP Listening Score is Calculated

Each question is categorized into a level of difficulty. The more difficult questions will give you more ‘points’. If you answered more difficult questions correctly than another test-taker, even though the total correct answers are the same, you may be assigned a higher level.