Mark Wilson

I am an Electrical Engineer who came to Canada through the Federal Skilled Worker stream under Express Entry. I had been working in engineering for several years when I decided to apply for permanent residency. Like most applicants who work in English daily, I assumed the language test would be a formality.

My first full practice test corrected that assumption within 90 minutes. I scored CLB 7 in Reading, CLB 7 in Listening, and CLB 8 in Writing. My Speaking was worse — I kept losing track of my own answers mid-sentence with a countdown timer on screen. None of these are scores that embarrass a person whose daily work involves writing technical reports and presenting to clients in English. That is how specific and artificial the CELPIP format is.

I spent the next five weeks preparing using the same method I use for engineering problems: I obtained the official scoring rubrics, broke each section into its component criteria, identified where I was consistently losing marks, and built a repeatable approach for each task type. I sat the CELPIP General once and scored 12 in all four sections.

In the months after I received my PR, I explained my preparation approach to four colleagues who were preparing for their own CELPIP tests. All four improved their scores. Three reached CLB 9 or above. The strategies I gave them are the same ones documented on this site.

I built MyCELPIP because the information that actually helps — the specific task structures, the scoring criteria, the timing strategies — is scattered across forums, YouTube comments, and paid prep course previews. This site puts it in one place, in the level of detail that actually changes scores, at no cost.