CELPIP Reading Part 4: Reading for Viewpoints
Can you keep several people's opinions straight inside one article — and then infer an unstated commenter's stance?
How this part works
A news-style article in which several people — a reporter, officials, residents, experts — hold different views on one issue, followed by comprehension questions, then a READER COMMENT on the article with blanks to complete. The comment belongs to a new voice whose opinion you must infer while filling the blanks.
The one thing that scores 9+
As you read, build a who-thinks-what map: each named person and their two-word stance. The questions mis-attribute views across people just like Listening Part 5 does across speakers. Then, before filling any comment blanks, read the whole comment once and ask: is this commenter FOR or AGAINST? Every blank must keep that one stance consistent — the wrong options are usually well-formed phrases that would flip the commenter's side mid-sentence. One voice, one direction, all five blanks.
A worked example
Original — written to show the trap, not taken from any real test.
An article covers a proposal to pedestrianize Main Street: the mayor supports it, a shop owner fears deliveries will suffer, a traffic engineer is neutral pending a study. Below it, a reader comment reads:
"As someone who walks Main Street daily, I think the critics are ____. Deliveries can be scheduled for early morning, like other cities already do, and the street would finally be ____ for families."
Which pair best completes the comment?
- exaggerating / safer
- correct / riskier
- exaggerating / riskier
- correct / safer
Answer: exaggerating / safer
Why: The commenter's evidence — deliveries are solvable, walks the street daily — sets a clearly pro-pedestrianization stance. Both blanks must serve that one direction: dismissing the critics AND welcoming the outcome. The mixed pairs are grammatical but incoherent as a single person's opinion; coherence of stance, not grammar, is what the blanks are scoring.
What caps people at Level 7
- Confusing the reporter's neutral framing with the quoted people's actual opinions.
- Filling comment blanks one at a time without first fixing the commenter's overall stance.
- Running out of clock here because Part 3 ate the time budget — Part 4 has the most questions in the section and sits last.
Practise this part under real conditions
Knowing the trap and beating it under the clock are different skills. Drill the real question formats in free CELPIP Reading practice, sit the full section in the free CELPIP mock, and see what your score means in the CELPIP score decoder. The whole test's structure is in the CELPIP format guide.