3 documents you must read before you do the IELTS test

Before doing the IELTS test, you should know the criteria that your examiners will use when they assess your writing and speaking. Fortunately, this information is available from the IELTS website.

Speaking assessment criteria are available here.

Writing Task 1 assessment criteria are available here.

Writing Task 2 assessment criteria are available here.

The first point to note is that examiners do not give you a single grade for writing or speaking. Instead, you will be assessed according to 4 criteria.

Looking first at speaking, we can see that those criteria are called:

1. Fluency and coherence

2. Lexical resource (i.e., vocabulary)

3. Grammatical range and accuracy

4. Pronunciation

Examiners will give you a whole-number grade for each category. For example, your Fluency and Coherence score may be a 6 or a 7, but not a 6.5.

So, how is it possible to get a 6.5 for speaking? It may happen if you get 6 in two categories and 7 in the other two. In that case, your average across the four categories would be 6.5, which would be your IELTS speaking test score.

So what happens if you get 7 in three categories and 6 in one category? In that case, your average would be 6.75, which is rounded down to 6.5. This might seem a little unfair, but the system works in a candidates's favour when the overall IELTS score is calculated. If, for example, you received 7.0 for Reading, 7.0 for Listening, 6.5 for Speaking, and 6.5 Writing, your average score of 6.75 would be rounded up to an overall IELTS score of 7.0.

As far as Speaking and Writing are concerned, the important point to note is that you will need an average across the four assessment criteria of 7.0 or higher if you want to get a 7.0 for that particular module of the test. Your overall Writing grade is actually a little more complicated, but what I say here is true at least for the individual writing tasks.

Although there are some people who may achieve band 8 in one area (say, pronunciation) and only band 6 in another area (say, lexical resource) but can still get an average of 7.0, for most people getting a 7.0 or higher involves getting a 7 or higher in all four categories.

Getting at least 7 in all categories should be your aim too. So your first task should be to download and study the assessment criteria. Pay particular attention the 7 and 8 bands, as these should be what you are aiming to achieve. Also pay close attention to the 5 and 6 bands so that you will know what to avoid.