CELPIP Reading 8 to 9: Worked Questions and Common Mistakes

Your photographs for Our Street, Then and Now

From: Elena Brooks
To: Priya Shah

Hi Priya,

Thank you for sending the small preview images from your family's photo album. We'd love to include your photographs of the corner grocery and the street parade in our neighbourhood exhibition, Our Street, Then and Now. The picture of the mountain is lovely too, but we're focusing on everyday life on these streets rather than holiday destinations. Your grocery photograph shows a side of the neighbourhood that our collection of formal building photographs is missing.

The small previews were enough for us to choose the pictures, but the printer will need full-size scans. You mentioned being nervous about lending the original prints. There's no need to leave them with us: if you book a scanning appointment, we'll make digital copies while you wait and hand the prints straight back. Please don't post them. If your brother can make clear scans at home, you can email those instead. The exhibition will use new prints, and our budget will cover that printing. Small scratches and worn edges are fine; please leave them in, as they help convey the age of the photographs.

For each photograph, we'd like a short caption saying where it was taken and what you remember about the occasion. An approximate year is enough, provided we label it as approximate. Please don't spend money researching the exact date. In the grocery photograph, your former neighbour is clearly the main subject. Could you ask her permission before we display that one? Please send that contribution once she agrees. The parade photograph shows a distant crowd, so we don't need you to trace everyone in it for this exhibition. If reaching your neighbour takes time, send the parade material first; we can prepare that contribution separately.

We'll put your name beside the photographs unless you'd prefer initials; let me know which you'd like. Permission to display the pictures in the gallery won't cover our website. After the exhibition, we may ask you separately whether we can include them in an online collection. Saying no to that would not affect their place in the gallery.

Once you've sent your notes, I'll put the captions together and email you a draft before anything goes to the printer. The opening is on Saturday, October 17, from 2 to 4 p.m. You're very welcome, but there's no obligation to attend. Several contributors will be away that weekend, and we're happy to include their photographs all the same. Let me know whether you'd prefer a scanning appointment or to send files from home.

Best wishes,

Elena

Priya’s reply

Hi Elena,

I'd like to use the gallery scanner. I can bring the originals on Friday and [7] . Please let me know whether there is a suitable appointment.

I hadn't considered the marks part of the story. I can see how leaving them in would [8] .

My former neighbour is travelling, and I may not hear from her for a while. I can [9] . That should let you get started with what is ready.

You may use my full name beside the photographs in the gallery. As I understand it, [10] . I'd like to see how the exhibition works out first.

I'll send my notes this week, though I can't make the opening. Please [11] . I'll come to see the exhibition when I'm back.

Best wishes, Priya

An afternoon at Cedar House

From: Nina Torres
To: Daniel Park
Subject: Something for everyone on Sunday

Hi Daniel,

Thanks for arranging an afternoon with Sam and his family while they are staying with you. I had a look at Cedar House's visitor guide. His children said they wanted to take home a small figure they had built, rather than another drawing or photographs of a display, so I suggest starting in the [1].

Your mother could join them at a seated station. If she wants to come upstairs afterwards, we can use the lift beside the [2] instead of sending her across to the stairs. She can decide how much walking she feels like doing.

Sam mentioned that he enjoys miniature buildings. In the upstairs gallery, he could watch [3]. I think he would enjoy that even if the children spend longer downstairs. We had also discussed drawing the view together. Unfortunately, if the forecast of rain is right, the [4] will be unavailable, so let's not make that the centre of the afternoon.

Before leaving, we could sit in the Listening Room and hear [5]. That would give your mother a rest without ending the visit immediately. I don't think everyone has to follow the same route; we can meet back at the entrance when we're ready. Let me know what Sam thinks.

See you Sunday,
Nina

Keeping the voices in a neighbourhood history

A. When the residents of Marlow Street began making an audio history of their neighbourhood, they expected a collection of dates and familiar names. The first interviews produced something less tidy. Two neighbours remembered the same winter storm in different years, and a former shopkeeper described a street that later arrivals barely recognised. Project coordinator Lena Cho decided not to force these accounts into one agreed story. The differences showed how the same place could mean different things to people. She kept the original recordings and recorded which details came from personal recollection rather than surviving documents. The project would explain these limits instead of disguising memory as a complete record.

B. That approach affected the interviews themselves. Lena's team began with broad questions and allowed speakers to choose what mattered to them. A pause did not automatically mean that an interviewee had forgotten something; someone might be deciding how to describe a difficult experience. Interviewers therefore waited rather than supplying an answer. They also asked speakers to explain local expressions that a future listener might not know. A follow-up question about what a place looked or sounded like often produced a fuller account than asking for another date. These details made an account understandable, but the team did not treat a fluent delivery as proof that every remembered event was accurate.

C. Preparing a short episode required another set of choices. The editor removed repeated microphone checks and long interruptions, but left hesitations that revealed uncertainty about an event. She sometimes put two different recollections next to one another rather than using a smooth connecting sentence that would make them appear to agree. Each speaker heard the edited section to check that its meaning had survived the cuts. This was not an invitation to turn a recollection into an official finding. The unedited recording was kept separately, allowing later researchers to hear the exchange and judge what the short episode had left out.

D. The finished episodes were published with transcripts and short notes identifying the speakers and explaining references to places that had changed. A transcript helped listeners follow unfamiliar names, while the notes distinguished a speaker's memory from information checked in a document. Later, a resident supplied a photograph that clarified where one shop had stood. The team added a note beside the episode rather than quietly replacing the interview with a corrected version. Lena saw publication as an invitation to add context, not a declaration that the work was finished. A clear record of additions let listeners understand why the account had become more detailed without losing the voices that had started it.

What should a customer-service badge tell us?

Aster Stores is redesigning the badges worn by staff at its customer-service counters. The current badge carries the company logo and an employee number. Managers want to add a first name in large print. The proposal sounds modest, but it has opened a discussion about what customers need to know about the person helping them, and what employers should keep within the workplace.

Regional manager Leah Morris believes a name can make a busy counter feel less impersonal. “When someone has taken care to solve your problem, you should be able to thank that person without calling them ‘the woman near the door’,” she says. Leah also thinks a first name helps a customer return to the same employee when a question takes more than one visit. She does not want surnames or personal contact details on badges. “The point is to recognise someone during an interaction, not give a stranger a route into their life outside work.”

Customer adviser Amir Khan values recognition too, but questions whether a visible name is the best way to provide it. After a disagreement about a return, a customer used his first name and the store location in a public online post. The post criticised him personally, even though he had been applying a decision made by management. “It is useful for a manager to know who handled a case,” he says. “That does not mean every passer-by needs the same information.” Amir would keep the employee number and add a clear role label. A customer could still identify the adviser when seeking help, without attaching the encounter to a name searchable outside the store.

Service trainer Tessa Bell thinks both sides are overlooking another part of identification. “A name helps only if the employee can explain what they are responsible for,” she says. She recalls customers approaching a clearly named staff member who was unable to deal with their question and did not know whom to ask. Tessa would put an employee's function in the largest print and require the whole team to know where to direct different requests. Staff who wanted to show a first name could do so, but she would not make that the main measure of good service.

Leah accepts the value of role labels, although she worries that an employee number alone will keep a human exchange feeling like a transaction. Amir replies that a respectful conversation can be personal without making the employee's name public. Their difference is not over whether customers deserve help or whether helpful staff deserve credit; it is over how much public identification those goals require. A redesigned badge may be easy to print. Agreeing on the boundary it represents will take more care.

Reader comment

As someone who regularly helps my father deal with service problems, I can see the appeal of [6]. He feels more confident if he can pick up a conversation where it left off. But the strongest case for putting a first name on a badge is not the same as a case for putting more personal information there.

The third contributor's suggestion to [7] seems sensible to me. It could spare my father the frustration of telling the whole story to someone who cannot deal with it. Still, better wording on a badge would not solve that problem if staff [8].

I am less persuaded by the concern that [9]. On several occasions an adviser whose name we never learned has listened carefully and helped us. That does not make the experience cold. At the same time, the online incident reminds me that a complaint about a store's decision can [10]. Customers need a way to raise concerns, but they do not need to carry every disagreement beyond the counter.