Dominic Cole's IELTS Blog » band score

IELTS speaking – band scores explained

Dominic Cole — Tue, 29 Dec 2009 19:32:42 +0000

How is your IELTS speaking band score calculated? This is an important question for any IELTS candidate because many mistakes can be avoided by knowing what the examiner is looking for and how your speaking is graded. This post gives you a brief outline of the grading criteria, how band scores are calculated and how examiners [...]

IELTS band score calculator

Dominic Cole — Mon, 28 Dec 2009 00:36:45 +0000

Calculate your approximate band score in listening an reading with my calculator

IELTS writing – grammatical range and accuracy explained

Dominic Cole — Mon, 21 Dec 2009 15:30:13 +0000

Grammatical range and accuracy is perhaps the most misunderstood grading criterion in IELTS writing. The clue is in the name: it is not enough to not make mistakes (accuracy), you also need to use a variety of grammatical structures (range). Too often candidates focus only on the mistakes. Accuracy of grammar Accuracy is not a [...]

IELTS writing – lexical resource explained

Dominic Cole — Mon, 21 Dec 2009 14:04:51 +0000

What is “lexical resource”? In a word it is vocabulary and it matters for IELTS writing because it is one of the 4 grading criteria which affect your band score. Here is an explanation of what to do and not to do to improve your band score. There are 4 key areas to look at: [...]