IELTS BANDS

By ieltsbands Last updated May 21, 2019

IELTS BANDS

IELTS BANDS | A IELTS student should know how IELTS bands are given to students . IELTS bands are based on four factors:Fluency and Coherence,Vocabulary,Grammatical Range and Pronunciation.Below detailed description is given.In this table, the candidate is called “she”, instead of “he or she”.

IELTS BANDS PREPARATIONS

A Detailed Description of the Band Scores

How to score 9 bands in IELTS

Fluency and coherence (& cohesion)

Fluency For IELTS Bands 9

This candidate speaks as fluently as native English speakers. That is, she speaks at the natural speed and continuity of native speakers.
She occasionally shows hesitation or occasional pauses when speaking about the most complex or abstract concepts or when recalling examples, just as a native speaker sometimes does.

Coherence

When this candidate speaks at length, such as in Part 2, the listener (the examiner) feels that the long answer has a sense of “wholeness” and completeness.
Similarly, when she speaks about several aspects of a complex topic, the examiner can effortlessly follow the flow of ideas because the relationships between ideas are clearly spoken. To achieve this, she makes full use of ‘cohesive devices’, such as the introductory.
When topics are introduced by the examiner in the form of questions in Part 1 and Part 3 or the task card in Part 2, she fully develops these topics by speaking ‘expansively’ to a degree that is suitable. That is, she never gives very short answers to questions.

Vocabulary

The candidate shows all the vocabulary attributes of a reasonably well educated native English speaker (but not necessarily equal to a highly educated native speaker).

Vocabulary Range

The candidate has a wide enough vocabulary to fully converse about all topics in depth.

Flexibility and Precision of Meaning

The candidate shows an accurate knowledge of small differences in meaning and usage between similar or related words, including the more advanced vocabulary.

Idiomatic Usage

The candidate uses idiomatic language quite often, naturally and without errors. This includes a few examples of less common or more advanced idiomatic language.

Grammatical range and accuracy For IELTS Bands 9

• A Band 9 candidate shows the strong grammar of a reasonably well educated native speaker. The only mistakes are the kind of minor mistakes that even some reasonably well educated native speakers may occasionally make.

Pronunciation For IELTS Bands 9

• The candidate sounds like a native English speaker, or like someone who speaks “international English” (such as American English influenced by British English or British English influenced by American English).

• In general, the candidate shows all the pronunciation features of a native English speaker with the only errors being the kind of errors that even reasonably well educated native
English speakers might occasionally make.

• Possibly she has a slight hint of her native accent.

How to get 8 bands in IELTS

Fluency For IELTS Bands 8

• The candidate speaks almost as fluently as the Band 9 candidate but there might be a few times when she hesitates slightly to find the correct word or grammatical structure
to use. However, these occasional hesitations are usually when she is trying to express the most abstract or complex ideas, as in Part 3 and her hesitations are usually to search for ideas.

Coherence

• Most of this candidate’s language is fully cohesive, as for the Band 9 candidate.However, the examiner might occasionally feel that the candidate could have used a more natural choice of cohesive device (i.e., a choice that native speakers would chose.)

As for the Band 9 candidate, she shows the ability to fully develop her answers, using examples and a suitable amount of relevant extra information.

Grammatical range and accuracy For IELTS Bands 8

• The candidate has a wide enough vocabulary to discuss all topics in depth.

Flexibility and Precision of Meaning

• She accurately shows knowledge of small differences in meaning and usage between similar or related words. That is, she shows strong flexibility in her usage of vocabulary.

Idiomatic Usage

She shows good knowledge of common idiomatic expressions.
She uses a few examples of less common idiomatic vocabulary in a natural way but occasionally might have some minor inaccuracies in their usage.

Paraphrase

If needed, she shows the ability to accurately communicate meaning using other words when she does not know the precise, more advanced word that an educated native speaker would use.
She is very skillful in rephrasing sentences or phrases when she wants to add clarity to or amplify her meaning.

Style

She shows a very accurate understanding of the appropriate level of formality to use in her choice of words. This includes the possible, occasional use of quite informal language, if it is suitable for the conversation.

Collocation

She shows strong knowledge of collocation (= the most natural and common combinations of different words), although she may occasionally show minor inaccuracy with less commonly used words.

Pronunciation Errors For IELTS Bands 8

This candidate is similar to Band 7 except for the fact that she makes fewer grammatical mistakes than a Band 7 candidate.
Perhaps she makes 1 to 5 minor mistakes in the whole test. These mistakes are usually made when producing the most advanced structures.

Grammatical Range

This candidate shows the ability to use the most advanced grammar, effortlessly and almost always 100% accurately.

Complex Sentences

She speaks using complex sentences very frequently and shows a wide range of connectives to form these sentences.

Accent Errors For IELTS Bands 8

• The examiner might be able to recognize the candidate’s native accent but it is (usually but not always) slight and does not interfere with the English pronunciation in any way.

Understandability

The pronunciation is very clear and accurate. The examiner rarely or never needs
to ask the candidate to repeat anything (except in the case of the examiner having poor hearing or the candidate speaking too softly).

Basic Sound Accuracy

All the vowels, consonants and diphthongs are pronounced very accurately, the way a native speaker pronounces them.

Sentence Stress

Almost all the time, the candidate places the sentence stress on the correct word, although there might be one or two times when the examiner feels the wrong word was stressed.
To a greater degree than a Band 7 candidate, this candidate makes use of sentence stress to express meaning or for emphasis.

Intonation

The candidate frequently shows the ability to vary her intonation to express meaning. Speed of Delivery and “Chunking”.
The candidate shows the ability to consistently vary her speed by speaking in “chunks” of word groups.

Word Stress

The candidate might make a rare error in placing the stress in a multisyllable word on the wrong syllable but these errors would be in less common words and they would be the type of error that some native English speakers might make.

How to achieve 7 bands in IELTS

Fluency For IELTS Bands 7

This candidate is able to speak continuously most of the time with no apparent effort. However, she hesitates occasionally when searching for a word or the correct way to express herself.
Possibly she selfcorrects her language more than once or twice, when speaking more complex language.

Coherence

The flow of her ideas is easy for the examiner to follow. To some extent, she (wisely) chooses to avoid speaking about the most abstract or complex ideas and this helps her to speak coherently. That is, she tries to speak in somewhat simpler terms than the Band 8 candidate. (In contrast, the Band 8 candidate attempts to express herself almost at the same level and the same degree of complexity as when speaking her own language while the Band 7 controls this impulse to some extent.)
This candidate shows frequent usage of a good range of connective phrases and expressions.
However, the examiner notices that the range of this knowledge, and the understanding of the usage of these ‘connective devices’ may still be a little restricted. That is, the examiner can sometimes think of better ways to connect ideas than what the candidate spoke (i.e., the candidate occasionally uses a connective device a little inappropriately) or the candidate sometimes doesn’t use a connective phrase when one should be used.
She shows a good ability to develop her answers (e.g., adding an appropriate amount of suitable extra information or extending a discussion topic).
Although her ability to extend discussion questions in Part 3 is much better than the ‘rudimentary’ level of a Band 6, her ability in this area is still below that of the Band 8 candidate who is able to ‘fully’ develop such questions.

Range For IELTS Bands 7

The candidate has a big enough vocabulary to hold discussions on a wide variety of topics, at some depth. However, for the most difficult Part 3 questions that the examiner may ask, (e.g., testing to see if she might qualify for Band 8), her vocabulary may be insufficient to allow her to answer with complete fluency.

Flexibility and Precision of Meaning

Generally, she shows quite strong vocabulary flexibility (= knowledge of the wider meanings and usage of a word, beyond a single meaning or usage.)

Idiomatic Usage

She shows good knowledge of several common idiomatic expressions.
She might use a few examples of less common idiomatic vocabulary but also might use some of these inappropriately.

Paraphrase

She shows the ability to successfully use other words to convey her meaning when she does not know the exact word that a native speaker would use or when she might need to rephrase a sentence to clarify or amplify her meaning.

Style

She shows an awareness of appropriate language style (informal/formal usage) but may occasionally choose vocabulary that is unsuitably formal, such as vocabulary that is more suitable for written English rather than spoken English.

Collocation

She shows good knowledge and understanding of collocation (= the most natural and common combinations of different words), although she may make a small number of inappropriate choices of word combinations.

Errors For IELTS Bands 7

This candidate makes a few more grammatical errors than a Band 8 for grammar (for example, 5 to 10 errors) but these are usually minor errors, when using the more advanced grammatical structures.
She might make a very small number of (perhaps one or two) “simple” errors such as when using irregular past tense verbs or omitting the use the past tense when it should be used. Such errors are the result of “old habits” of speech rather than a lack of knowledge.

Range

This candidate “impresses the examiner” with her ability to accurately produce a wide range of grammatical structures, including the most advanced structures. However, a few, mostly minor errors exist.

Complex Sentences

This candidate quite frequently uses complex sentences and shows a good range of connectives used to form these sentences.

Accent For IELTS Bands 7

The candidate’s native accent might still be recognizable, but the accent of a native Englishspeaker is more dominant than the native accent.

Understandability

The pronunciation is very clear and accurate almost all the time. The examiner never or rarely needs to ask the candidate to repeat anything.
There might be one or two times when the examiner needs to“think twice” about what word the candidate just said but it is rare for the examiner to need to ask the candidate to repeat herself.
There should be no “patches” of language or short combinations of words that the examiner does not understand at all. However, the examiner might have to quickly“think twice” about the meaning of one or two “patches of language.

Basic Sound Accuracy

Except for perhaps one or two occasions, the candidate pronounces all letters and diphthongs accurately.

Sentence Stress

Most of the time, the candidate accurately places the sentence stress on the correct word in order to accurately express or emphasize her meaning.
The candidate might make one or two errors when placing the word stress in noun+noun or adjective+noun combinations but these errors are usually for the lesserknown word combinations.

Intonation

The candidate shows good knowledge of how native Englishspeakers use intonation, i.e., a rising or falling tone, to communicate meaning.

Speed of Delivery and “Chunking”

The candidate frequently shows some knowledge of how native Englishspeakers vary their speech speed to show meaning. This is mostly shown by her ability to speak in “chunks” of “word groups” faster than other parts of her sentences. However, she probably does not consistently speak in “chunks”.

Linked Sounds

As part of her ability to show the skill of “chunking”, the candidate shows good ability at linking her speech sounds so that these chunks can be spoken faster. These chunks are spoken almost as if they were one long word.
Along with an overall ability to speak linked sounds, the candidate shows a few instances of being able to link and blend her sounds very much like a native speaker does (or some native speakers do), for some short word combinations. For example, she might say, “dId?’?” for, “did you”.

Word Stress

There might be one or two instances of the candidate mispronouncing a multisyllable word by stressing the wrong syllable but these pronunciation mistakes do not cause confusion.

IELTS 6 Bands Criteria

Fluency For IELTS Bands 6

This candidate’s fluency is marked by her willingness to speak continuously (or her lack of fear of continuing to speak, even if it results in some errors).
This candidate shows both the willingness and the ability to seek clarification if she doesn’t understand a question, especially in Part 3.
She also has some ability to start talking immediately following a question, even if to just comment about the question. By doing this, she largely avoids sitting there silently for an unnaturally long period of time before answering a (more difficult) question, as Band 5 and Band 4 candidates tend to do.

Coherence

Occasionally the examiner momentarily has trouble following the flow of the candidate’s ideas. This is a result of the candidate breaking her flow of language a few times in order to selfcorrect, search for vocabulary or grammatical structures or to search for ideas to talk about.
The candidate shows knowledge of a few different connective phrases and words and uses a variety of them several times during the test, although sometimes the usage is slightly incorrect or unsuitable. (Again, what marks this candidate’s usage of connectives is her willingness to attempt to use them.)
She shows some ability to extend her answers (e.g., adding an appropriate amount of suitable extra information or extending a discussion topic). But this skill is not fully developed. For example, there are times when her answers should be developed more and her ability to extend a discussion question is somewhat rudimentary.

Range For IELTS Bands 6

The candidate has a wide enough vocabulary to converse on most topics at some depth. However, some of the more difficult questions in Part 3, or topics that are not familiar to the candidate reveal a lack of enough vocabulary, or a lack of vocabulary flexibility to continue a discussion beyond a rather simple, but still correct answer.

Flexibility and Precision of Meaning

Generally, she is able to express the meaning she wants to express. But she makes a few errors in word choice, although these are usually not severe enough to cause confusion or a lack of understanding in the listener (the examiner.)
Unlike the Band 5 candidate, many of her vocabulary mistakes are a result of her willingness to try to speak expansively, even attempting at times to speak beyond the limits of her vocabulary knowledge.

Idiomatic Usage

She shows only a limited knowledge of the most commonly used idiomatic expressions.

Paraphrase

When needed, she shows the ability to successfully rephrase her sentences for clarification. Similarly, she shows the ability to choose different words to convey meaning when she does not know the most appropriate word to use. However, sometimes her choice of vocabulary is not the most suitable choice when attempting to paraphrase.

Style

At times, she may speak using inappropriately formal language (such as the language in “business English” letters or in academic writing).

Collocation

At times, she might use a few inappropriate word combinations but these are usually not serious enough to cause confusion.

Errors For IELTS Bands 6

This candidate makes more errors than a Band 7 candidate, perhaps 10 to 20 errors, but not as many as a Band 5 candidate.
Most of these errors are when attempting the more advanced grammatical structures. However, a small number of the errors are at the less advanced level, such as “old habits” of not using a correct irregular past tense verb or not using the past tense when it should be used.

Grammatical Range

The candidate shows knowledge of and a willingness to attempt to use some of the more advanced grammatical structures, even though she might make several errors when doing this.
She sometimes produces these more advanced structures correctly, or produces them with perhaps one error in the structure, but usually not several errors.
Basically, she shows that she has some understanding of the more advanced grammar but she still has not thoroughly perfected the use of this grammar.
In general, this candidate has knowledge off grammatical structures beyond that of Band 5 and is willing to demonstrate this knowledge, even at the risk of making mistakes.
As long as these attempts are mostly correct and do not result in confusion to the examiner or contain many errors, the candidate is given points for showing this knowledge, rather than being penalized for the errors.
This candidate shows at least some knowledge of, and correctly uses (some of the time), most of the following grammatical points:
the perfect verb tenses?
the perfect modal verbs?
the passive voice?
reported speech? and, the subjunctive mood.
She has at least a basic understanding of the usage of the word, “would” and can (usually) correctly make sentences such as, “If I had more free time, I’d (= I would) go out more often with my friends.
This candidate probably also shows the ability to use “there + be” in other tenses, besides the simple present tense.
The candidate nearly always answers questions using complete sentences i.e., oneword answers are rare.
However, she probably does not even attempt the past unreal conditional, such as, “If I had known they were coming, I would have cleaned my house” or, if she does attempt it, she might make more than one error using this structure.
When speaking about the future using the verb, “will”, this candidate shows the ability to use adverbs of certainty such as “possibly”, “probably”etc.

Complex Sentences

She shows some knowledge of complex sentences and a willingness to produce many of these in the test.
However, her range of connectives used to produce these sentences may still be a little limited and she might sometimes uses a connective word or phrase inappropriately or incorrectly.
The candidate shows the examiner, (at least two or three times), that she can correctly use the relative pronoun, “which”, as well as other relative pronouns.

Accent For IELTS Bands 6

The candidate’s native accent might still be recognizable, but the accent of a native English speaker is more dominant than the native accent.

Understandability

The pronunciation is very clear and accurate almost all the time. The examiner never or rarely needs to ask the candidate to repeat anything.
There might be one or two times when the examiner needs to “think twice” about what word the candidate just said but it is rare for the examiner to need to ask the candidate to repeat herself.
There should be no “patches” of language or short combinations of words that the examiner does not understand at all. However, the examiner might have to quickly “think twice” about the meaning of one or two “patches of language”.

Basic Sound Accuracy

Except for perhaps one or two occasions, the candidate pronounces all letters and diphthongs accurately.

Sentence Stress

Most of the time, the candidate accurately places the sentence stress on the correct word in order to accurately express or emphasize her meaning.
The candidate might make one or two errors when placing the word stress in noun+noun or adjective+noun combinations but these errors are usually for the lesserknown word combinations.

Intonation

The candidate shows good knowledge of how native Englishspeakers use intonation, i.e., a rising or falling tone, to communicate meaning.

Speed of Delivery and “Chunking”

The candidate frequently shows some knowledge of how native English speakers vary their speech speed to show meaning. This is mostly shown by her ability to speak in “chunks” of “word groups” faster than other parts of her sentences. However, she probably does not consistently speak in “chunks”.

Linked Sounds

As part of her ability to show the skill of “chunking”, the candidate shows good ability at linking her speech sounds so that these chunks can be spoken faster. These chunks are spoken almost as if they were one long word.
Along with an overall ability to speak linked sounds, the candidate shows a few instances of being able to link and blend her sounds very much like a native speaker does (or some native speakers do), for some short word combinations. For example, she might say, “dId?’?” for, “did you”.

Word Stress

There might be one or two instances of the candidate mispronouncing a multisyllable word by stressing the wrong syllable but these pronunciation mistakes do not cause confusion.