Exercise 2: IELTS Speaking grading criteria

Let's see how well you know 4 marking criteria of IELTS Speaking test. Your IELTS Speaking test is graded using 4 grading criteria. A good knowledge of these criteria guarantees better preparation, as you know how to improve your performance on Speaking test.

Fluency and coherence

  1. It is better to
    1. avoid cohesive devices not to sound academic
    2. connect sentences with linking words (such as 'firstly', 'next', 'in general')

  2. To improve your Fluency and Coherence, you should
    1. speak at your natural pace
    2. speak quickly to impress the examiner


Lexical Resource

  1. To improve your Lexical Resource, you should
    1. learn the whole answers by heart
    2. learn advanced vocabulary and know how to use it in your speech

  2. Your aim is to
    1. repeat the same words or phrases to show you know them
    2. use words of similar meaning, if you cannot think of a specific word in English


Grammatical Range and Accuracy

  1. You should
    1. be as accurate as possible
    2. be as quick as possible; fluency is more important than accuracy.

  2. It is better to
    1. use only simple sentence structures to make sure you won't make any mistakes
    2. try to use a variety of grammatical structures


Pronunciation

  1. Your goal is to
    1. speak with clear English intonation and pronunciation
    2. speak very loudly