8 Band IELTS Essay: What the Four Numbers Behind an Overall 8 Actually Are

Most pages that promise an 8 band IELTS essay print the essay and stop. The reader is left to guess what made it an 8, and the usual guess is wrong: that every part of it was excellent.

An overall 8 on a Task 2 answer is arithmetic. Four criteria, one band each, averaged and rounded. There are eleven different sets of four numbers that produce an 8, and in most of them two criteria are sitting at 7.

This post shows that arithmetic, counts what the two band 8 answers in our own sample library actually scored, and ends with the one sentence habit both of them were told to drop.

What "band 8" means on a single essay

Task 2 is marked on four criteria of equal weight: Task Response, Coherence and Cohesion, Lexical Resource, and Grammatical Range and Accuracy. Each one gets a whole band. The four are added, divided by four, and the result is rounded to the nearest half band, with a quarter rounding up.

That means the band for the essay depends on one number: the sum of the four.

A sum of 31 is the entry point. Thirty gets you 7.5, and the difference between those two sums is one criterion moving by one band.

Your reported Writing band is not this number on its own. It combines Task 1 and Task 2, with Task 2 counting roughly twice as much, and how your writing band is calculated walks through that second stage. Everything below is about one essay.

The eleven ways to reach 8

Here is every set of four whole bands that sums to 31 or 32, which is every way a Task 2 answer reaches exactly 8.0.

Only one of those eleven rows is four 8s. Nine of them contain a 7 or lower, and one contains a 4.

Read that last row again. A candidate with three 9s and a 4 gets the same essay band as a candidate with four 8s. That is not a loophole, it is what equal weighting means, and it changes what you should work on. One criterion two bands below the others costs you exactly as much as two criteria one band below.

So the practical question is never "how do I write a band 8 essay". It is "which of my four numbers is lowest, and what is the cheapest band I can add to it".

The two 8s in our library both score 9, 8, 7, 7

Bandly's sample library holds 25 published answers, each one scored by the same engine that scores a submission in the app. Two of the 25 reach an estimated overall band 8, both Task 2 essays.

The same four numbers, twice, in row 2 of the table above. Neither essay reaches 8 for cohesion. Neither reaches 8 for grammar. Both sit at the bottom of the band, on a sum of 31, one criterion band away from 7.5.

One more count, across all 25 answers rather than these two: the Coherence and Cohesion estimate never came back above 7. Not once. In this library, an 8 was never built on cohesion. It was built on Task Response and Lexical Resource while cohesion and grammar stayed at 7.

Two things to say plainly about those numbers. They are estimates from an automated scoring engine that has never been compared against a qualified human examiner, so they are a guide to where an answer is weak, not a result. And the Task Response figures in particular cluster at the top of the scale across the whole library, which is a known weakness of our own scoring rather than a fact about the essays. The pattern worth taking from the table is the shape, not the digits: the criteria that moved were vocabulary and task coverage, and the criteria that stayed put were cohesion and grammar.

You can read both answers in full, with the sentences that drove each criterion marked, on the band 8 samples page. The prison or rehabilitation essay is the shorter of the two at 331 words.

What the 9 was doing

Task Response is the criterion that asks whether you answered the whole question. Both essays answer a two part instruction, and both do the same thing in the introduction: they name both sides and then state a position.

From the living abroad essay:

While migrating to another country presents notable challenges, including cultural alienation and the emotional toll of leaving loved ones behind, I believe that the professional and personal benefits of living abroad far outweigh these drawbacks.

One sentence, both sides, a clear position. Nothing rare in the vocabulary, nothing unusual in the structure. The criterion note on that sentence says it answers the comparison in the task directly and states the writer's position from the outset.

This is the cheapest criterion to raise, and the one candidates most often lose by accident. An essay that discusses both views brilliantly and never says which one the writer holds has not answered a question that asked for an opinion. If your plan has no position sentence in it, you are writing a 6 or a 7 whatever the rest of the language does. The step before this one is covered in band 7 to band 8, which takes a single paragraph from 7 to 8 with every change named.

Where both answers stopped at 7, and it was the same habit

The scoring notes on both essays recommend the same change for Coherence and Cohesion, in almost the same words: stop using formulaic transitions to structure the body paragraphs, and carry the contrast in the topic sentence instead.

Here is the sentence in question, from the living abroad essay:

On the one hand, the difficulties associated with moving to a foreign country are undeniable. The primary obstacle is often the language barrier, which can impede daily tasks and hinder initial social integration.

Nothing in that is wrong. It is clear, it is grammatical, and it signposts the structure correctly. That is precisely why it is a 7 and not an 8. The published descriptors ask at band 7 for a range of cohesive devices used appropriately, with some under use or over use possible, and at band 8 for cohesion to be managed well in all its aspects. A paragraph that announces its own role with a stock phrase is being signposted rather than managed.

The rewrite:

The hardest part of moving abroad is the language. Without it, ordinary tasks take twice as long and the first months of social life stall completely.

What changed, and which criterion each change serves:

• The signpost is gone. "On the one hand" is doing no work that the content does not already do, and removing it is the Coherence and Cohesion change. The contrast now lives in the idea.
• The topic sentence states the point instead of announcing a paragraph. Also Coherence and Cohesion: this is the "given before new" pattern, where each sentence starts from something the reader already has.
• "Impede daily tasks" became "ordinary tasks take twice as long". That is Lexical Resource, and it goes in the direction most candidates do not expect: the plainer phrase is the more precise one.
• Two clauses became two sentences of different lengths. Grammatical Range and Accuracy is about range as well as error count, and a paragraph whose sentences are all the same length and shape reads flat even when every one is correct.

Our post on linking words in Task 2 has the count behind that first bullet: the lower scoring answers in this library use more linkers per 100 words, not fewer.

Three ways candidates chase an 8 and lose marks

Memorised sentences. A learned opening that does not fit the question in front of you is visible, and it costs Task Response as well as Lexical Resource. Memorised phrases in IELTS writing lists the ones markers see most often.

Invented statistics. "Studies show that 73% of migrants" is not evidence and does not raise any criterion. Nothing in the descriptors rewards a number, and an example you clearly made up weakens the argument it was meant to support.

Writing much more than you need. An essay of 400 words has more sentences to get wrong and leaves less time for Task 1. The minimum is 250 words and a tight 280 beats a loose 400.

Do this today

Take an essay you have already written. Give it four separate marks, one criterion at a time, in whole bands only, writing each number down before you look at the next criterion. Add the four together.

If the sum is 29 or 30, find the lowest of the four numbers and work only on that one. That is the whole strategy, and the table above is the reason it works: at a sum of 30 you are one criterion band away from an 8, and it does not matter which criterion supplies it.

If you want a second set of four numbers to compare your own against, you can paste the essay into Bandly and get a band estimate for each criterion with the sentences behind each one. They are estimates from an automated engine, not examiner marks, so use the gap between the four rather than the overall figure. The band 9 page covers what the step above this one asks for, which is less about language than most candidates assume.