Understanding IELTS

WEEK 1
MARKING THE SPEAKING TEST
ROB: This week, weve introduced the different parts of the IELTS test and weve given you a
taste of the listening and reading parts of the test. Next week, were going to concentrate on
the Speaking paper. To help you prepare for that, youre going to watch some examples of part
of a speaking test. Youll see that video in the next step of this course. Before you watch it
though, lets talk about how the speaking test is marked.
In your speaking test, the examiner will be marking you on four things: Fluency and coherence,
lexical resource, grammatical range and accuracy and pronunciation. In each of those areas,
youll get a band score from one the lowest to nine, the highest. The average of those four
scores will be your final band score for the speaking paper.

Understanding IELTS
British Council 2015