After you take the exam, you will receive a score report. And on that report you will have an overall score, and a score for each of the four sections of the exam.
Your overall score is just really your average score from the scores you receive in listening, reading, writing, speaking. And the scored will be reported in half point increments from 1 to 9. For example, you may receive a score of 6, or you may receive a score of 6.5. But there will not be other decimal points to your score. There will not be 6.75 or 6.25, those don't occur, it's in half-point increments.
A Band 1 is basically a non user of English. This person can not really understand English, can not speak, can not write. This person basically has no skills in English. As you go through the band all the way up to 9. It is an expert user of English. So at each step along the way from 1 to 9 is a different level of English. And each level has its own set of characteristics or defining qualities that make a person that level or the next level.
If you average your four scores and the number end in 0.25, it's going to round up to the next half point. And if your score after it's been averaged ends in 0.75, you're very lucky because your score is going to go up to the next band.
For instance, a person who gets 6.75, we'll have their score rounded up to 7. Unfortunately, if you're scoring after it's been averaged ends in a 1.125 or lower than point 25 that we have up here, when it's going to round down. It's going to round down to the band score. So 6.125, average of all 4 sections would end up being an overall band score of 6.
That is a common question among students. And the answer really does depend on whatever institution it is that you plan to apply to. Different institutions have different requirements. And you should definitely check to see what your band score should be for whatever you're using your IELTS score for.
So check your specific institutions. That's very, very important. If we're looking at colleges and universities, we can say a score of 5.5 to 7.5 is considered usually a good score. And most academic institutions will set their minimum scores somewhere in that range.
Your band score for listening and reading will just be the score you received out of 40. For example, if you get 30 out of 40 correct in reading of the general training exam, that means you'll get a band score of 6. For the Academic reading section getting 30 out of 40 means you get a band score of 7.
Writing is a little different and a little more complex. Writing is scored using what's called a rubric, which is just a use different categories to analyse your writing. Then they're gonna move your score in that category down.
The first thing they want in writing is that you share coherence and cohesion. Coherence is all about how the ideas fit together, so one idea leads to the next, and it's very easy to follow what you're saying. And cohesion is about how you use words like pronouns. Or transition words like, for example, for instance, things like that to hold your writing together.
Lexical resource is a fancy way of saying that you have a really good vocabulary. And you show your vocabulary knowledge in your writing.
Grammatical range means that you use a variety of structures and you use them accurately when you write.
Task achievement and task response are a little different. We'll talk about both of these in the writing section in more detail, you writing lessons. But basically task achievement is for task one responses in the writing section. And that just means that you fulfilled all of the requirements for the task, you followed the directions carefully and did everything they wanted you to do. Task response means it's very similar but it means that you, excuse me, it's for task two writing exercises. And it means that you wrote a good academic formal essay in the correct fashion.
Speaking is very similar. They also use a detailed rubric, and the categories are similar to writing, they want fluency and coherence. Fluency means well, you're able to speak how not really how quickly, but maybe you don't have a lot of long pauses. And your ideas flow together easily and you don't struggle to come up with sentences and words a lot.
Coherence means that your ideas stick together, just like the writing concept we just discussed.
Lexical resource is the same as with writing how well can you use vocabulary. And also how accurately do you use the words that you use.
Grammatical range and accuracy again, about how much variety and how varied your grammar structures are.
And whether you use them correctly or whether you have a lot of mistakes. Pronunciation basically how easy it is to understand you. That you don't have a lot of sounds that are really not very natural sounding in English or that cause confusion. They're looking for individual sounds and stress patterns in sentences.
