How IELTS Speaking is Scored
What you will learn
IELTS Speaking Evaluation: How it Works!
How does the IELTS Speaking evaluation really work?
You are evaluated on 4 parts of your spoken English
Fluency
Vocabulary
Grammar
Pronunciation
Each part carries 25% of the mark.
You are not evaluated your ideas or opinions. Your accent is also not important and is not evaluated, so long as you use the pronunciation features of English effectively. What is important is the English you use to communicate effectively.
Understanding the IELTS Speaking Band Descriptors
The examiners use a criteria sheet called the Band Descriptors to evaluate IELTS speaking.
There is a publicly available version, and you can see it below.
The IELTS speaking band descriptors are a bit technical, but here they are in simple English
You are evaluated in 4 areas as you can see below.
For each area, the band descriptors tell you what aspect of that area you need to focus on.
FLUENCY
- Effort or Ease of speaking
- Hesitations
- Use of connectives and discourse markers
- Ability to develop a topic
VOCABULARY
- Range of Vocabulary
- Accuracy
- Use of idiomatic vocabulary / collocation
- Paraphrase
GRAMMAR
- Simple and/or complex structures
- Flexible use
- Mistakes and impact on understanding
PRONUNCIATION
- Range of features
- Control of features
- Easy to understand
Click on the image below for more detail.
Watch this video to see each of the 4 parts of the IELTS Speaking Evaluation
Use the Band Descriptors to Improve your English
You can use the band descriptors to evaluate yourself.
You can do this as follows…
Record yourself practicing a part 2 answer.
- Choose a topic.
- Time yourself preparing for a minute.
- Record yourself speaking for 2 minutes – time yourself!
- Then listen to yourself and always look back at the Band Descriptors.
- Transcribe (write out) what you said. Both Microsoft and Apple have good dictation functions for Word/Pages, but your pronunciation need to be pretty good!
- Try to see where you did well and where you need to improve.
Start Practicing your IELTS Speaking Answers
Remember the secret is in the practice.
Don’t just read about this – act on it!
Now is a good time,
Go for it!
Now you know how IELTS Speaking is evaluated, go and find out about the Part 1 of the exam and how best to prepare for it.
