How IELTS Writing is scored

Four criterion scores, averaged, then rounded. The rounding is where people lose half bands they thought they had earned, so it is worth understanding before anything else.

The arithmetic

Each task is marked on four criteria. Each criterion gets a whole or half band. Those four are averaged, and the average is rounded to the nearest half band, with quarters rounding up.

Read the middle two rows again. An essay averaging 6.25 and an essay averaging 6.5 report the same band. If you are sitting at 6.5, raising one criterion by half a band takes the average to 6.625, which still reports 6.5. You need two.

Which two is the entire question, and it is why a band report with four numbers on it is worth more than a band report with one.

The four criteria

• Task Achievement (Task 1) or Task Response (Task 2) — did you do what was asked, cover all of it, and support it?
• Coherence and Cohesion — can the reader follow the progression, and do the linking words do real work?
• Lexical Resource — range and precision of vocabulary, including collocation and repetition.
• Grammatical Range and Accuracy — variety of structures, and how often errors appear.

They are equally weighted, which has a blunt consequence: a band 8 for vocabulary cannot rescue a band 5 for grammar. That averages to 6.5, and no amount of good vocabulary changes it.

Task 2 counts double

The two tasks are marked separately and then combined, with Task 2 weighted twice as heavily. Your Writing band is roughly one third Task 1 and two thirds Task 2.

So if you run short of time, finish Task 2 properly and let Task 1 be rougher than you would like. If you only have the energy to practise one, practise Task 2.

The exception is people who consistently mishandle one Task 1 type — maps and process diagrams especially. A reliable weakness in a third of your score is worth fixing even though the maths says Task 2 first.

Examiners match, they do not subtract

There is no error tally. The examiner reads the response and decides which band descriptor describes it best overall, which is a different operation from starting at 9 and deducting.

The practical difference: one clumsy sentence in strong writing costs almost nothing, while the same mistake made twelve times costs a band. Descriptors describe patterns.

Which is why "I made 12 mistakes" tells you much less than "I made the same article mistake 12 times". The first is a score. The second is one afternoon's work.

It also explains something people find counterintuitive: going from 7 to 8 is not a matter of removing the last errors, because Band 8 scripts contain errors too. If you want the cheapest half band on this list, it is usually coherence and cohesion, which responds to planning rather than to years of language acquisition.