What are the IELTS band descriptors?

Three of the four criteria are shared. The first criterion changes with the task: it asks whether you did what that particular task demanded.

Task Achievement (Task 1) is whether your report or letter contains the right information, accurately and completely. Task Response (Task 2) is whether you answered the actual question, took a clear position and backed it up.

Coherence and Cohesion in Writing is about organisation: the order of your ideas, your paragraphs, and how sentences connect through linking words and words like this, they and such. Fluency and Coherence in Speaking is how smoothly you keep talking and how easy your answer is to follow.

Lexical Resource is vocabulary: how wide it is, how precisely you use it and how well words fit together. Grammatical Range and Accuracy is how varied your sentences are and how many mistakes they contain. Pronunciation, in Speaking only, is how easily a listener understands you, including stress, rhythm and intonation, not whether you sound like a native speaker.

Both PDFs say a response has to match all the positive features of a band to be given that band. In practice that means a single weakness can hold a criterion down even when the rest of the answer looks stronger. The Writing PDF also highlights certain weaknesses in bold to show they limit the rating.

The descriptors describe whole bands only. Half bands appear because the four criteria are averaged: Speaking is the average of its four criteria, and each Writing task is the average of its four (ielts.org). In Speaking, the PDF notes that you are rated on your average performance across all three parts, so one weak answer does not decide the score on its own.

Each Writing task is scored separately on its four criteria, which carry equal weight, and the task score is their average (ielts.org). The two tasks are then combined, with Task 2 contributing twice as much as Task 1 to the Writing band (Academic Writing format, General Training Writing format).

ielts.org does not publish the exact arithmetic or rounding for combining the two task scores. As an informal estimate only, many teachers weight them two to one: a Task 1 at 6 and a Task 2 at 7 point to a Writing band around 6.5 to 7. Treat that as a rough guide, not an official formula.

Your overall band is the average of Listening, Reading, Writing and Speaking, rounded to the nearest half band. An average ending in .25 rounds up to the next half band, and one ending in .75 rounds up to the next whole band. In ielts.org's own example, bands of 6.5, 6.5, 5.0 and 7.0 average 6.25 and give an overall 6.5 (ielts.org). Try your own numbers in the IELTS band score calculator.

ielts.org gives every band a short skill-level label. The right-hand column is our plain-English summary, not official wording.

From the ielts.org Academic and General Training Writing pages: Task 1 needs at least 150 words and Task 2 at least 250. An answer that is too short may not give enough evidence for the higher bands; writing more is not penalised. Answers that are off topic or written as notes or bullet points are penalised, and plagiarism is severely penalised.

From the Writing descriptors PDF: a response of 20 words or fewer is rated band 1, wording copied from the question is not counted, and band 0 is kept for a candidate who did not attempt the task, wrote entirely in another language, or whose answer is proven to be completely memorised.

Each guide below takes one descriptor and explains every criterion band by band, from 9 down to 4, with what usually separates one band from the next and why so many candidates stall at 6 to 6.5.

Writing Task 2 band descriptors covers the essay, shared by Academic and General Training. Academic Writing Task 1 band descriptors covers graph, chart, map and process reports. General Training Writing Task 1 band descriptors covers the letter. Speaking band descriptors covers all three parts of the interview.