Reading Part 1: Correspondence

Six message questions, then five connected blanks

Part 1 uses an email between community members, customers, colleagues, or other people dealing with an everyday social or workplace situation. The official study pack describes about 11 minutes for 11 questions. The first six questions test the main message. The next five complete a short response to that message.

All text and questions appear in the part-level interface, and you may revise answers until the part clock ends. The main email and response are usually conversational, friendly, and familiar without becoming extremely informal. Four choices appear for each question.

Purpose, relationship, sequence, and implied meaning

Questions can target the writer’s main purpose, a concrete detail, the order of events, a requested action, or an inference about attitude and what is likely to happen next. A correct answer often paraphrases the email instead of repeating its wording.

For the response, you also need discourse control. Pronouns must refer to the right person or thing. Connectors must preserve the logic. A polite promise cannot replace a refusal, and a response cannot thank the writer for an attachment that was never sent.

Map the exchange before filling the reply

1. Name the relationship.Write writer → recipient and identify whether they are friends, colleagues, neighbours, customer and business, or another practical pair.
2. State the purpose.Reduce the email to one action: request, explain, invite, apologize, confirm, or change a plan.
3. Build the timeline.Mark what happened before, what is true now, and what the writer wants next. Keep dates attached to events.
4. Answer the six evidence questions.Use names and unusual details to locate a passage, then verify the full meaning around them.
5. Read the complete response first.Predict the function of each blank, fill direct links, and reread the whole reply for tone, reference, and logical continuity.

For every blank, inspect three levels: grammar inside the sentence, meaning inside the paragraph, and relationship to the original email. An option that passes only the first level is not enough.

Let the original request control the response

This original exchange is not an official CELPIP item.

Why a fluent sentence can still be wrong

• Skipping the relationship. The selected tone or action does not fit how the two people know each other.
• Reading dates without events. The correct day is chosen but attached to the wrong deadline, meeting, or earlier change.
• Stopping at a repeated word. A choice echoes the email while reversing who performed the action.
• Answering a response blank locally. The sentence is grammatical, but it contradicts the main message or the previous response sentence.
• Losing pronoun reference. They, it, or this change is connected to the nearest noun rather than the intended idea.
• Inventing likely behaviour. A choice sounds reasonable in daily life but is unsupported by the exchange.

Track who owns the next action

Check the whole exchange

• Could I name the writer, recipient, relationship, and purpose?
• Did I separate past events, current facts, and requested next actions?
• Could I point to evidence for every message answer?
• Did I verify subject, action, time, and reason instead of matching one keyword?
• Did each response option fit the local grammar and the complete reply?
• Were pronouns, tone, and requests consistent across both texts?
• Did I answer all 11 questions within the part budget?