Week 3 complete. This week decoded how IELTS examiners score your speaking — criterion by criterion. Here's everything in one place: what each criterion measures, what Band 7 looks like, and a 5-step self-assessment protocol you can use after every practice session from today.
The Scoring Cheat Sheet
All 4 criteria — what they mean and what Band 7 requires
Fluency & Coherence (25%)
Frequency of hesitation, repetition, self-correction. Ability to speak at length without prompting. Logical connection between ideas.
Band 7: Speaks at length with only occasional hesitation. Ideas are connected and easy to follow.
Lexical Resource (25%)
Range of vocabulary, precision, collocation, ability to paraphrase. Scored on variety — not just whether words are correct.
Band 7: Uses less common vocabulary with awareness of style. Paraphrases effectively when needed.
Grammatical Range & Accuracy (25%)
Mix of simple and complex structures. Errors that cause misunderstanding penalised more than minor errors. Self-correction noted.
Band 7: Uses a variety of complex structures with some flexibility and accuracy.
Pronunciation (25%)
Phoneme clarity, word stress, sentence stress, intonation. Accent is NOT scored — intelligibility and prosody are.
Band 7: Easy to understand throughout. Uses varied intonation and controlled stress to add meaning.
The 5-Step Review
Use this after every practice session — takes 3 minutes
- Play back your recording and count hesitations and filler words
- Note words you used more than twice — flag them for replacement
- Identify any 3-second stretch where your pitch stays completely flat
- Circle answers that used only simple sentences with no complex structures
- Score each criterion roughly (5, 6, 7) — track the trend across sessions