How to Mark Your Own IELTS Essay Against the Four Criteria

Reading your own essay and deciding "that feels like a 7" is not marking. It is guessing, and it tends to guess high, because you already know what you meant.

Marking is four separate readings, one for each criterion, each asking one question. This post gives you the four passes, the question to ask at each, and a worked example using an opinion essay paragraph. It takes about twenty minutes per essay by hand.

The band labels here are illustrative teaching labels, not marks from a qualified examiner.

Why one criterion at a time

The four public band descriptors for Writing Task 2 are Task Response, Coherence and Cohesion, Lexical Resource, and Grammatical Range and Accuracy. Each is scored separately, then the four are averaged.

If you read the essay once and judge all four together, one strong feature contaminates the rest. A paragraph with impressive vocabulary reads as a good paragraph even when it never answered the question. Reading four times, with one question in mind each time, keeps the judgements independent. It is slower and it is the only version that works.

Print the essay or open it four times. Do not fix anything during a pass. Mark first, edit afterwards.

Pass 1: Task Response

The question: does every part of the prompt have an answer in the essay, and is a clear position held from start to finish?

Do this concretely. Write the prompt at the top of the page and underline each thing it asks for. A "discuss both views and give your own opinion" prompt asks for three things, not two. A two part question asks for two. Then find where in the essay each one is answered and write the paragraph number next to it.

Anything with no paragraph number beside it is a gap, and gaps are the most expensive fault in the whole exam. An essay that answers half the prompt struggles to move past band 5 for this criterion however well written it is.

Then check the position. Read only your introduction and your conclusion. If they state different positions, or if the introduction states one and the body argues the other, that is a consistency problem and it costs marks here.

Pass 2: Coherence and Cohesion

The question: could a reader follow the argument from the first sentence of each paragraph alone?

Read only the first sentence of every paragraph, in order, and nothing else. If those sentences by themselves tell a coherent story, your essay has structure. If they do not, no amount of linking words will fix it.

Then count your linking words. If "Moreover", "Furthermore" and "In addition" appear more than about three times between them, you are using connectors as decoration. Overuse is a recognised marker of a mid band answer, not a high one. Cohesion at band 7 and above comes mostly from referencing ("this shift", "such policies", "the latter") and from arranging information so each sentence picks up something from the one before.

Last, check paragraphing. One idea per paragraph, and no paragraph shorter than three sentences.

Pass 3: Lexical Resource

The question: is each unusual word the right word, and how many times did you repeat the topic noun?

Highlight every word you would not use in ordinary conversation. For each one, ask whether it is used correctly in that exact phrase. A rare word in the wrong collocation scores lower than a common word used precisely. "Make a research" and "do a decision" are the shape of this problem.

Then count how many times the main topic noun appears unchanged. If your essay is about traffic and "traffic" appears eleven times, you have a range problem that paraphrase would fix: congestion, road use, vehicle numbers.

Do not reward yourself for long words. Reward yourself for precise ones.

Pass 4: Grammatical Range and Accuracy

The question: what proportion of your sentences contain no errors, and how many different structures did you use?

Count your sentences. Then count the ones with no error of any kind, including articles and singular or plural agreement. That ratio is the accuracy half of the criterion, and it is the half most candidates estimate too generously.

For range, mark each sentence S for simple, C for compound (two clauses joined by and, but, so), or X for complex (with a subordinate clause). A page of all S or all C is limited range. Range means variety of accurate structures, not long sentences, and a long sentence with three errors scores worse than two short correct ones.

Turning four judgements into one number

The four criterion scores are averaged and the result is rounded to the nearest half band. A mean ending in .25 rounds up to the next half band, and one ending in .75 rounds up to the next whole band.

Look at rows three and four. Moving one criterion from 6 to 7 changed nothing. Now look at rows four and five, where the same size change moved the reported band by half. This is why chasing your weakest criterion beats polishing your strongest, and why knowing which one is weakest matters more than knowing your overall band.

A worked example

Here is an opinion essay prompt and one body paragraph.

Prompt. Some people believe that university education should be free for all students. To what extent do you agree or disagree?

Firstly, free university education is very important for the society. Moreover, if the education is free, more students can go to university and get a good job. Furthermore, the government will get more tax from these people. Therefore, free university education is good for the economy of the country.

Now the four passes.

Task Response. The paragraph gives a reason and follows it through to an outcome, so it does address the prompt. What it lacks is any example or specific detail, and "very important for the society" is an assertion rather than an argument. Illustratively band 5 to 6.

Coherence and Cohesion. Four sentences, four connectors: Firstly, Moreover, Furthermore, Therefore. Two of them are wrong, because the second and third sentences are not additional points, they are steps in one chain of cause and effect. Connector overuse plus incorrect choice. Illustratively band 5.

Lexical Resource. "Get a good job", "is good for the economy", "very important". All accurate, all the vocabulary of everyday speech. No collocation above the common range. Illustratively band 5.

Grammatical Range and Accuracy. "For the society" and "if the education is free" both misuse the definite article. Four sentences, three of them built on the same simple pattern. Illustratively band 5.

Rewritten.

The strongest argument for free tuition is economic rather than moral. When cost is removed, participation rises among students from lower income households, who are otherwise the first to be priced out. Those graduates go on to earn more and therefore to contribute more in tax across their working lives. Norway and Germany, both of which abolished tuition fees for domestic students, offer a working test of the idea rather than a theoretical one.

Same argument, four sentences, one connector. The gain came from specificity and from removing three of the four connectors, not from longer words.

Try this today

Take an essay you wrote in the last month and run only pass 1. Underline what the prompt asked for, then find the paragraph that answers each part. Most people find a gap on the first attempt, and that gap is worth more marks than anything you would have fixed by rereading for grammar.

When you want a second opinion faster than twenty minutes, you can paste the essay into Bandly for an estimated band on each of the four criteria along with the sentences behind each judgement.