CILS and CELI Italian Exams: How to Prepare

In short: CILS and CELI test reading, listening, writing and speaking. CILS, and CELI from CELI 3 (B2) up, also have a grammar and vocabulary part. Read Italian on everyday topics, review words every day, listen every day, and practise the writing and speaking tasks. Use the official past papers to learn the format.

Which exam?

Two Italian universities run the best-known Italian exams. Both cover levels A1 to C2:

• CILS, from the Università per Stranieri di Siena. The higher levels are called CILS UNO (B1), DUE (B2), TRE (C1) and QUATTRO (C2). There is also a B1 version for citizenship (B1 Cittadinanza).
• CELI, from the Università per Stranieri di Perugia. The levels are numbered, for example CELI 2 for B1 and CELI 3 for B2.

Many people take a B1 exam because B1 Italian is required for citizenship by marriage or by residence. Other recognised certificates exist too, such as PLIDA and CERT.IT. Ask the office, school or employer which certificates they accept before you book.

What the exams test

Both exams test:

• Listening (ascolto)
• Reading (comprensione della lettura)
• Writing (produzione scritta)
• Speaking (produzione orale, with an examiner)

CILS also has a separate part on grammar and vocabulary, called Analisi delle strutture di comunicazione. CELI has a similar part, Competenza linguistica, from CELI 3 (B2) up. The names and order of the parts differ between the two exams and by level, and they can change. Always check the current details on the official site of Siena (CILS) or Perugia (CELI), and use their sample papers.

How many words?

There is no official word count, and sources count words in different ways. Teachers often quote rough figures for European languages: about 2,000–3,000 common words for B1 and about 3,000–4,000 for B2. Treat these only as a rough guide.

Estimate Your Vocabulary (Settings → Languages) gives you a word count, not a level. It is a rough check, and it depends on where you stop scrolling. When it opens at first run, scroll to the point where the common words stop looking familiar, tap OK, and stop a little early rather than late: words marked as known get no translation.

What to read at each level

• A2–B1: graded readers (easy books written for learners) for A2 and B1, for example found by searching for letture graduate (buy or borrow them as EPUB or PDF and open them with Open a file), short emails, adverts, notices and instructions. Just starting? See Start a New Language From Zero.
• B1: news for learners and blogs about food, travel, family and daily life. If a site has a news feed (RSS), add it in Feeds → Add Feed → Add URL.... You can also share a web page to pimReader from your browser.
• B2: real news and opinion articles on exam topics: work, school, health, the environment, culture, life in Italy. Modern short stories and young-adult novels are good for longer reading.

For fun, look in the library under ＋ → Free books for Italian stories and classics. They are old, so they are not exam models. For easy reading there, look for fairy tales and children's stories (for Italian, for example, Collodi's Pinocchio); the catalogues differ by language, so the choice is bigger in some languages than others.

How many coloured words you see depends on the book. A graded reader or a modern text may have a few per paragraph; classics often have many more. If almost every line is full of colour, choose something easier.

A weekly plan (30–45 minutes a day)

Only 15 minutes a day? Do the reviews and the reading every day, and speak once a week.

Every day

1. 5 minutes: daily reviews: tap the Exercise card on Home. Tap Again, Hard, Good or Easy. Spaced repetition brings each word back when you're likely to start forgetting it.
2. 15 minutes: read one text. Tap a coloured word, tap its translation in the dictionary panel, and tick Memorize on the word's card. Keep 5–10 useful words a day.
3. 10 minutes: listen. Turn on read-aloud (in a book: ⋮ → Book ..., tick Play Audio:, choose Speech Synthesis). Listen once with the text, once without.

Twice a week (AI): grammar. Articles, prepositions, past tenses and pronouns cause most mistakes. When something surprises you in a text, ask in Ask AI: "Why is it sono andato but ho mangiato?" For more, ask for a short course on one topic and use Create exercise book and Run quiz for each lesson. No AI? Use a grammar book with exercises.

Twice a week (AI): produzione orale. Open Ask AI → Speaking practice. Ask: "Ask me about my family and my work, at B1 level" or "Play a pharmacist; I need something for a cold." Use Train speech (select a paragraph → ⋮ → Train speech) on sentences with double consonants and stress you find hard.

Once a week (AI): produzione scritta. Write one exam task, such as an email, a short letter or a text about an experience. Paste it into Ask AI with the official criteria, and ask: "What would an examiner take points off for? Show a corrected version." Then write it again. This is a study aid, not an official mark.

Every two or three weeks: do one official past paper, timed, without the app. Give your weakest part more time next week.

Before the exam

Keep reviews going, add few new words, do timed past papers, and learn the task instructions. See A 90-Day Plan for a B2 Language Exam for a longer structure.

What it won't do

• It has no official CILS or CELI papers. Use the ones on the official sites.
• It won't give you points or a pass. AI feedback is a guide, not an exam result.
• It has no exam timer. Time yourself.
• It has no exam listening audio. Read-aloud uses a computer voice, not real speakers.

Reading, translations, feeds, read-aloud with your phone's voice and daily reviews (the Exercise card on Home) are free; Ask AI, exercise books, Speaking practice, Train speech and writing feedback use AI, which is part of pimReader Plus. When you open an AI feature, pimReader offers Try free for a month: no card, no account, nothing renews. Tap Not now to carry on without AI.