IELTS Speaking is marked on four criteria of equal weight: Fluency and Coherence, Lexical Resource, Grammatical Range and Accuracy, and Pronunciation. The examiner gives each one a whole band from 0 to 9, judged on your average performance across all three parts, and your Speaking band is the average of the four. Below, each criterion is shown band by band from 5 to 9, in the descriptors' own words and in plain English.
4
criteria, each worth a quarter of the Speaking band
1
band per criterion, for the whole test
3
parts the examiner hears before deciding
11–14
minutes the test lasts
How is IELTS Speaking marked?
The examiner listens to the whole test and gives one whole band to each of the four criteria. IELTS states that the criteria carry equal weight and that their average is your Speaking band. The test is also recorded.
Two notes printed under the public descriptors explain how the bands are chosen:
A candidate must fully fit the positive features of the descriptor at a particular level.
A candidate will be rated on their average performance across all parts of the test.
The first note matters more than it looks. To be given Band 7 for vocabulary, your speech has to show everything the Band 7 description asks for, not most of it. The second note means there is no separate mark for Part 1, 2 or 3. One fluent answer does not lift a criterion on its own, and one bad moment does not sink it.
IELTS does not publish how the average of the four is rounded. The usual reading, and what our scorer applies, is to round down to the nearest half band, so 7, 7, 7 and 6 average 6.75 and give 6.5. The arithmetic for every paper is in how IELTS band scores are calculated.
What does Fluency and Coherence mean?
Fluency and Coherence is about keeping going without effort and making your ideas easy to follow. It is not about speed. A pause to think about what to say next is normal; a pause to find a basic word, a restart, or the same linking word in every sentence is what lowers this band.
| Band | In the descriptors | In plain English |
|---|---|---|
| 9 | “Any hesitation that occurs is used only to prepare the content of the next utterance and not to find words or grammar.” | You only ever pause to think about ideas. |
| 8 | “Hesitation may occasionally be used to find words or grammar, but most will be content related.” | The odd search for a word, but almost all pauses are thinking time. |
| 7 | “Able to keep going and readily produce long turns without noticeable effort.” | Long answers come easily; slips happen mid-sentence but do not break the thread. |
| 6 | “Coherence may be lost at times as a result of hesitation, repetition and/or self-correction.” | You are willing to speak at length, but you sometimes lose the thread. |
| 5 | “Usually able to keep going, but relies on repetition and self-correction to do so and/or on slow speech.” | You keep going by repeating yourself, correcting yourself or slowing right down. |
Linking words sit in this criterion too. At Band 5 the descriptors describe “overuse of certain discourse markers”, at Band 6 a range used “though not always appropriately”, and at Band 7 “flexible use of spoken discourse markers, connectives and cohesive features”.
Here is the same idea at three levels, written for this guide:
Band 5
“My city is… is very… it is big city, and, and many people live there, so, so the traffic is very bad, very bad.”
Band 6
“My city is quite big, and there are a lot of people, so the traffic is, how can I say, really bad. But anyway, I like it.”
Band 7
“It's a big, crowded city, and the traffic is honestly a nightmare, but I'd still say it's a good place to grow up, because there's always something going on.”
What does Lexical Resource mean?
Lexical Resource is your vocabulary: how much of it you have, how precisely you use it, and whether you can talk around a word you do not know. Range alone does not earn the band. The descriptors reward words that fit: the right partner words (collocation), the right level of formality (style), and paraphrase when you need it.
| Band | In the descriptors | In plain English |
|---|---|---|
| 9 | “Total flexibility and precise use in all contexts.” | Exactly the right word, every time, on any topic. |
| 8 | “Skilful use of less common and idiomatic items despite occasional inaccuracies in word choice and collocation.” | A wide vocabulary used with skill, with the occasional wrong choice. |
| 7 | “Some ability to use less common and idiomatic items and an awareness of style and collocation is evident though inappropriacies occur.” | Some less common words and natural word partnerships, with some misses. |
| 6 | “Vocabulary use may be inappropriate but meaning is clear.” | Enough words to talk at length; some are the wrong choice, but you are understood. |
| 5 | “Resource sufficient to discuss familiar and unfamiliar topics but there is limited flexibility.” | You can discuss most topics, but with the same few words, and paraphrase often fails. |
“Effective use of paraphrase as required” appears at Bands 7 and 8, and “generally able to paraphrase successfully” at Band 6. In practice, paraphrase is what you do when the word you wanted will not come: “the thing you use to open a bottle” keeps the conversation going where silence would not.
Band 5
“Shopping online is good because it is easy and it is good for people who are busy.”
Band 6
“Online shopping is very convenient, you can buy things very fast and it saves a lot of time.”
Band 7
“Online shopping has made life far more convenient, especially if you work long hours, although it's very easy to end up buying things on impulse.”
What does Grammatical Range and Accuracy mean?
This criterion asks two questions at once: how many kinds of sentence you can build, and how often they come out right. A candidate who only uses short, safe sentences limits the range score; one who attempts every structure and gets most of them wrong limits the accuracy score.
| Band | In the descriptors | In plain English |
|---|---|---|
| 9 | “Structures are precise and accurate at all times, apart from ‘mistakes’ characteristic of native speaker speech.” | Accurate throughout, apart from the slips any fluent speaker makes. |
| 8 | “Wide range of structures, flexibly used. The majority of sentences are error free.” | Most sentences are correct, including the complex ones. |
| 7 | “A range of structures flexibly used. Error-free sentences are frequent.” | Complex sentences are used well and often come out right; a few basic errors remain. |
| 6 | “Though errors frequently occur in complex structures, these rarely impede communication.” | You mix simple and complex sentences, but the complex ones often contain errors. |
| 5 | “Complex structures are attempted but these are limited in range, nearly always contain errors and may lead to the need for reformulation.” | Simple sentences are mostly right; longer ones nearly always go wrong. |
Band 5
“When I was child, I live in a village and I go to school by walk every day.”
Band 6
“When I was a child I lived in a small village, and if it rains we have to walk to school anyway.”
Band 7
“When I was a child we lived in a small village, so even if it rained, we had to walk to school, which I didn't mind at all.”
Notice what separates the Band 6 and Band 7 lines: the same kind of sentence, with an “if” clause and a past habit, but the Band 7 version keeps the tenses consistent and adds a relative clause that is correct.
What does Pronunciation mean?
Pronunciation is how easily the examiner can understand you. The descriptors look at individual sounds, word stress, how you group words into chunks, rhythm and intonation, and above all at how much effort it takes to follow you. Your accent itself is not the question.
| Band | In the descriptors | In plain English |
|---|---|---|
| 9 | “Can be effortlessly understood throughout. Accent has no effect on intelligibility.” | Nobody ever has to work to understand you. |
| 8 | “Can be easily understood throughout. Accent has minimal effect on intelligibility.” | Easy to follow, with rhythm and stress that hold up across long answers. |
| 7 | “Displays all the positive features of band 6, and some, but not all, of the positive features of band 8.” | Everything Band 6 does, and part of what Band 8 does. |
| 6 | “Can generally be understood throughout without much effort.” | Clear overall; the odd word is unclear, and stress or rhythm is uneven. |
| 5 | “Displays all the positive features of band 4, and some, but not all, of the positive features of band 6.” | Clearer than Band 4, not yet as controlled as Band 6. |
Bands 7 and 5 have no description of their own in Pronunciation, which surprises many candidates. They are defined by the bands either side. So the practical question for Band 7 is which Band 8 features you can add to a Band 6 base: “appropriate rhythm”, flexible “stress and intonation across long utterances”, and being “easily understood throughout”.
If particular sounds or words cause you trouble, the pronunciation guide shows how each English sound is made, and the pronunciation checker marks a sentence you read aloud word by word.
The four criteria at a glance
The bands most candidates are working between are 6, 7 and 8. This is the difference in one line each:
| Criterion | Band 6 | Band 7 | Band 8 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Fluency and Coherence | Keeps going but sometimes loses the thread | Long turns without noticeable effort | Hesitation almost only to think about content |
| Lexical Resource | Enough words, some wrong choices | Some less common words, aware of collocation | Wide and skilful, with occasional inaccuracy |
| Grammar | Complex sentences often contain errors | Error-free sentences are frequent | The majority of sentences are error free |
| Pronunciation | Understood without much effort | Band 6, plus some Band 8 features | Easily understood, sustained rhythm |
Check yourself
Each line below describes something a candidate does. Choose the criterion it mainly affects. Some habits touch two, so read the explanation after you choose.
Check yourselfWhich criterion does it affect most?
5 questions1A candidate stops in the middle of a sentence, says “um, how do you say…”, and starts the sentence again.
The answer is Fluency and Coherence. Stopping to search for language and restarting is what Fluency and Coherence describes. At Band 5 hesitations are “often associated with mid-sentence searches for fairly basic lexis and grammar”. It may also point to a gap in vocabulary, but the pause itself is a fluency matter.
2A candidate describes three different things as “very good” and talks about “doing a photo”.
The answer is Lexical Resource. Repeating one general word and using the wrong partner word (we take a photo) are both vocabulary. Band 7 asks for “an awareness of style and collocation”; Band 6 accepts that “vocabulary use may be inappropriate but meaning is clear”.
3A candidate's simple sentences are accurate, but almost every “if” or “which” sentence has a mistake in it.
The answer is Grammatical Range and Accuracy. This is the Band 6 grammar picture exactly: “errors frequently occur in complex structures”, though they rarely stop the listener understanding. Band 7 needs error-free sentences to be frequent.
4A candidate speaks quickly and evenly, stressing almost every word the same, so the listener has to work to follow.
The answer is Pronunciation. Rhythm, stress and the effort it takes to understand you are Pronunciation. At Band 6 the descriptors note that rhythm “may be affected by a lack of stress-timing and/or a rapid speech rate”.
5A candidate links every idea with “and also” and “so”, whatever the relationship between the ideas.
The answer is Fluency and Coherence. Linking is part of coherence. Band 5 describes “overuse of certain discourse markers, connectives and other cohesive features”, and Band 7 asks for flexible use of them.
How do the criteria affect each other?
The four bands are given separately, but what you do in one shows up in another. Three trade-offs come up again and again:
- A rare word with a long pause can cost more than it earns. If you stop for three seconds to find an impressive word, you may gain a little in Lexical Resource and lose more in Fluency and Coherence. A plainer word, delivered smoothly, is often the better trade.
- Avoiding complex grammar protects accuracy but caps range. Short, correct sentences are safe up to a point. Band 7 needs complex structures used often and mostly correctly, so you have to attempt them.
- Speed hurts pronunciation and fluency together. Rushing flattens stress and rhythm, which the Band 6 Pronunciation descriptor names directly, and it tends to produce more restarts.
There is also one habit that hurts every criterion: memorising. IDP's advice to candidates is that memorised responses do not flow in a conversational way, and an examiner who hears a speech that does not quite answer the question has very little to give a band to.
How can you tell which band you are speaking at?
The most reliable way, short of a real examiner, is to record yourself and listen with the tables above beside you. Four passes over one recording are enough:
Record a full test, start to finish
Answer real questions under real timings, without stopping the recording. A single question tells you very little, because the bands describe your average across the test.
Listen once for fluency
Note every pause that is a search for a word rather than for an idea, every restart, and every repeated linking word.
Write it down and read it for vocabulary and grammar
A transcript shows repeated words, wrong word partners and errors in your longer sentences far more clearly than listening does.
Listen once more as a stranger would
Could someone who does not know you write down every word? Where they could not, that is a pronunciation point to work on.
The Part 1, Part 2 and Part 3 checkers do the measuring part for one recorded answer, scoring it on the four criteria. For the difference between two specific bands, how to get Band 7 in Speaking puts a Band 6 and a Band 7 answer to the same question side by side.
Try it on a full paper
Speaking · 11 to 14 minutes
A band for each criterion, corrections and sample answers.
The Speaking Simulator sits you through all three parts with an examiner who asks each question aloud, then reports a band for each of these four criteria with the answers they rest on. For practice on single questions, the Part 1 question bank, the Part 2 cue cards and the Part 3 discussion topics let you hear each question and record an answer.
Where to check this
Every rule in this guide comes from these official pages. Test centres can differ on dates and arrangements, so check yours too.
- IELTS Speaking band descriptors · IELTS
- IELTS scoring in detail · IELTS
- IELTS Academic Speaking test format · IELTS
- 7 mistakes to avoid in the IELTS Speaking test · IDP IELTS
Questions people ask next
Is IELTS Speaking marked on your accent?
No. Pronunciation is judged on how easily you are understood, not on where you are from. The descriptors say that at Band 8 your accent has minimal effect on intelligibility and at Band 9 none. A British or American accent earns nothing extra; clear rhythm, stress and sounds do.
Are the four IELTS Speaking criteria worth the same?
Yes. Fluency and Coherence, Lexical Resource, Grammatical Range and Accuracy, and Pronunciation each carry a quarter of the score. The examiner gives each a whole band and your Speaking band is the average of the four.
Does the examiner give a band for each part of the Speaking test?
No. The descriptors say a candidate is rated on their average performance across all parts of the test. Each criterion receives one band for the whole test, so a weak start in Part 1 can be balanced by a strong Part 3.
Will idioms and rare words raise my vocabulary band?
Only when they are used accurately and naturally. Band 7 looks for some ability to use less common and idiomatic items with an awareness of style and collocation. An idiom forced into an answer where it does not fit shows the opposite and can sound memorised.
Does speaking faster improve my fluency score?
No. Fluency in the descriptors means keeping going without noticeable effort and linking ideas clearly, not speed. At Band 6 the Pronunciation descriptor even notes that rhythm may be affected by a rapid speech rate. A steady pace with natural pauses is safer.
Written by SpeakMetry Team
The team that builds SpeakMetry's mock tests writes these guides. Every rule is checked against the official IELTS, British Council and IDP pages listed in the guide, and every example question, passage and sample answer was written for the guide it appears in.
