IELTS Speaking Evaluation Criteria

[willhunting]

Hello all,

Some days ago I stumbled across a rather interesting document on the ielts.org website: https://www.ielts.org/pdf/Volume%206,%20Report%203.pdf. The title is "3. Candidate discourse in the revised IELTS Speaking Test" by Annie Brown. This essay mentions some interesting metrics extracted from recorded speaking tests. These metrics were cross-referenced against the band that the test taker was given. I would like to know from you if you agree with them.

• 1. Total number of words: the research consisted of counting the total number of words the test taker spoke throughout the full speaking test and removed repetition, false starts, etc, and they got the following figures:
  
  Band 5: average 0657 words
  Band 6: average 1007 words
  Band 7: average 1034 words
  Band 8: average 1227 words

• 2. Proportion of error-free utterances. (these being tense, noun-verb agreement, singular/plural, article, preposition, pronoun choice and comparative formation.)
  
  Band 5: average 1.35
  Band 6: average 1.44
  Band 7: average 3.00
  Band 8: average 6.41

This document is long and it mentions other metrics as well. What I want to achieve here is to find ways to evaluate how good my speech is, considering the fact that by just looking for the band descriptors is not always clear in which band one fall in. E.g.: Band 8 for "Fluency and coherency" says: "speaks fluently with only occasional repetition or self-correction". I mean, how much is occasional? 10%, 20%?

Thanks in advance.

[David.IELTS.Examiner]

Hello willhunting!
Thank you for posting this! I think the stats you mention are very revealing. Clearly, for 6 or higher, the answers must be longer, though the increased level of grammatical accuracy moving from 5 to 6 need not be great. This fits with my personal experience and with the more detailed band descriptors that examiners have.
When examiners do their training and get monitored, we are given more details on what exactly words like 'occasional' mean in the context of the band descriptors. I cannot reveal these, sorry!
I will find some time to read through the rest of the report and also see if I can find any others.
All the best,
David

[drsid]

Interesting document !!

Dear sir, just asking out of curiosity,

Is the speaking section of the IELTS assessed then and there while taking the test or is it done later by someone else who listens to the recording again ?

[willhunting]

Hello David,

Thank you very much for your input! I totally understand you, I don't want you put you into trouble. I am quite sure the fewer the errors, the better. so instead of trying to count my errors, I will try to reduce them as much as I can.

Cheers!

[David.IELTS.Examiner]

Hello!
The IELTS Speaking test is assessed by the examiner doing the interview. It is recorded in case there are any issues after the test finishes.
All the best,
David

[Gelever]

One question,
What about band descriptors, does an examiner really put scores for each descriptor and then calculate the average band based on them?

[David.IELTS.Examiner]

Hi Gelever,
Yes, the examiner gives four scores (similar to the writing - you can see the boxes on the writing answer sheet). These are then averaged by a computer, but anyone with basic maths can figure it out, so the examiner knows exactly what score he/she is giving you.
All the best,
David