Mat Clark – IELTS Speaking
13
The Marking System
The IELTS speaking test is marked according to a carefully designed marking
system. All speaking examiners use exactly the same marking system and use it in the same
way.
The marking system is divided into four sections:
Fluency and Coherence
Lexical Resource (Vocabulary)
Grammatical Range and Accuracy
Pronunciation
This marking system is a printed document which the examiner refers to whilst
listing to your spoken English. The sections are divided into scores in the following way:
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Each box in the table contains a very detailed description of the features required for
that score in that section. The box for ―Fluency and Coherence 7‖ contains a 50-word
detailed description of all of the things a candidate must do to get a score of seven in this
section. Directly above and below the examiner can see the description for 8 and 6, in this
way the examiner can listen to your language in the interview and decide carefully which
description best fits your language.
It is important to understand this because many people do not realize that, for
example, a score of 7 for ―Lexical Resource‖ can only be awarded if your vocabulary
exactly fits the description in that box.
The descriptions are written in professional linguistic terms so it would not be very
useful to reproduce them here. Instead, the following section will translate into simple terms
the language features a candidate must produce to achieve scores of 6, 7 and 8.
