Assessment Criteria for IELTS Speaking
Assessment Criteria for IELTS Speaking
The IELTS Speaking assesses your ability to communicate in English. The examiner awards band scores for your spoken English-language skills. The Speaking test will take place in a face-to-face interview with a qualified IELTS examiner in a quiet room.
IELTS Speaking tests are conducted by trained and certified IELTS examiners. They must hold a relevant teaching qualification and have extensive teaching experience to become an IELTS examiner. When assessing your performance, they work with clearly defined criteria to assess your Speaking test.
Examiners assess your performance against 4 criteria. Fluency and coherence, lexical resource, grammatical range and accuracy and pronunciation. Your Speaking results are given as band scores which range from a band 0 to a band 9. Each whole and half band score corresponds to a level of English-language competence.
To find out more about the assessment criteria used by IELTS examiners, search online for the IELTS Speaking public band descriptors.
1. Fluency & Coherence (25%)
2. Lexical resources (25%)
3. Grammatical Range & Accuracy (25%)
4. Pronunciation (25%)
These four parameters are implemented in speaking modules. Let’s have a look on these in depth:
1. Fluency & Coherence: Fluency is considered as how fluently you can speak at length, your ability to talk without any pause or hesitation and without any self-correction. Although you can do self correction sometimes yet ignore it because it can lower your score.
Coherence means how effectively you are connecting your ideas with each other you must add good connectors, conjunctions and pronouns to make your modules tempting.
Here are some examples of cohesive devices:
* Adding ideas: Furthermore, In addition to.
* Contrasting ideas: However, on the other hand.
* Stating Example: For instance, for example.
* Providing explanation: because of, due to.
NOTE: Never overdo with cohesive devices with too many linking words, you will not sound natural and fluent.
2. Lexical resource: In this criterion, the examiner determines whether you use a wide range of vocabulary or not, try to convey the meaning in different words, and use a less common vocabulary. The usage of collocations and paraphrasing at the proper places are also taken into consideration. You must avoid errors while speaking.
This criterion focuses on the range of vocabulary. Basically, the wider range of vocabulary or expression you will use appropriately, the better score you will get. Try to add useful vocabulary in the IELTS exam that is unusual and uncommon. For example, instead of “modern technology”, we can use “cutting – edge technology”.
You must know these tips to impress your examiner.
* No repetition of words
* Don’t copy words directly from talk
* Learn topic-related vocabulary.
Achieve your desired band with the practice and show that you know how to use words effectively to make a proper sentence.
3. Grammatical Range: Here, your formation of sentences i.e. sentence structures and proper application of grammar is determined. The structures must be set so accurately that its use sounds natural and appropriate while you talk.
In IELTS, grammar is extremely important. Thus means that not only your grammar have to be correct, it also has t be varied.
There are generally 3 types of sentences:
* A simple sentence
* A compound sentence
* A complex sentence
To get higher score, add mixture of these sentences in your speaking module.
4. Pronunciation: Your ability to use intonation (i.e. rise and fall of the voice while speaking) and the way you pronounce any word is taken into account. Your accent must be such that it is clearly understood by the examiner.
In the IELTS speaking module you should be able to use the following features:
* Individual sounds
* Word stress
* Intonation
* Sentence stress
* Weak sounds
* Linking words
The best way to improve your pronunciation is to listen to native speakers and copy their intonation.
Best Wishes
Thanks.
