IELTS Commentry: How to go from Band 6 to Band 7 in the IELTS Speaking Test

The most frequently asked questions we get from people preparing for the IELTS Speaking test are

1. What am I likely to get for Speaking in the real test?

and

2. How can I score higher?

And fortunately, we have the answers!

In today’s video Hugo, a student from Taiwan and a native Chinese speaker, is taking our interactive IELTS Speaking test.

You will see the examiner ask questions and Hugo answer them, and you can learn from that, but wait – it gets better. After Hugo finishes his Speaking test, Adam (our Speaking examiner) shows his estimated Speaking score and explains why that is what Hugo would get in IELTS. And here comes the best part – Adam explains what Hugo needs to start doing to go from Band 6 to Band 7.

If you missed last week’s video, let us introduce Adam. Adam was an active IELTS Speaking examiner for 10 years and has an enormous amount of experience in assessing test takers’ Speaking ability. His feedback gives you a very rare opportunity to see how you are being assessed and scored in IELTS.

When you understand what your problems are and what you need to fix to get a higher score, it has an amazing effect on your exam preparation. It gives you a clear goal to work towards, and you don’t have to guess anymore!

The breakdown of Hugo’s score by the 4 IELTS criteria (Fluency and Coherence, Lexical Resource, Grammatical Range and Accuracy, and Pronunciation) is shown at the end of the video, and also in his evaluation report here.

The questions are shown on the screen while Hugo answers them. You will see that every question has a number (Q1, Q2, etc) and the examiner in his evaluation report is referring to Hugo’s little mistakes in every question. It’s great to watch the entire video first, including Adam’s commentary where he talks about Hugo’s performance and score, and then go back to the specific questions as you read the evaluation report. It will help you understand what exactly the examiner means when he says something like

Q7 – ‘it brings me surprise’ – is not quite accurate, try ‘it always surprises me’ or ‘there is always something surprising to experience each time’

Download Hugo’s speaking evaluation report here.

Try and answer the same questions in your own words, and perhaps even record yourself. It will provide an opportunity to listen to your pronunciation and see what needs work.