Guides / Scoring and band descriptors
The IELTS Band Score Table, and How Writing Is Marked Against It
The band table is published, short, and easy to find. What is hard to find is the part that matters when you are staring at your own essay: what a band 6 answer actually reads like, and what changes on the page when it becomes a 7.
This page gives you both. The official scale first, because that is what you came for, then the writing column.
The nine band scale
Every part of IELTS reports on the same nine band scale, in whole and half bands.
| Band | Label | What it describes |
|---|---|---|
| 9 | Expert user | Full operational command. Accurate, fluent, complete understanding |
| 8 | Very good user | Fully operational command with occasional unsystematic inaccuracies |
| 7 | Good user | Operational command, with occasional inaccuracies and misunderstandings in some situations |
| 6 | Competent user | Generally effective command despite some inaccuracies and misunderstandings |
| 5 | Modest user | Partial command, coping with overall meaning in most situations |
| 4 | Limited user | Basic competence limited to familiar situations |
| 3 | Extremely limited user | Conveys and understands only general meaning in very familiar situations |
| 2 | Intermittent user | No real communication beyond the most basic information |
| 1 | Non user | Essentially no ability beyond a few isolated words |
Band 0 exists and means the test was not attempted.
These labels describe language ability in general. They are not the marking criteria. Your Writing answer is not marked against "competent user"; it is marked against four separate descriptors, and those are where the detail lives.
How the Writing paper reaches a number
Writing has two tasks. Task 1 is 150 words minimum and Task 2 is 250 words minimum, and Task 2 carries twice the weight of Task 1.
Each task is scored on four criteria, each on the same nine band scale:
- Task Response in Task 2, or Task Achievement in Task 1. Did you answer what was asked, fully, with developed ideas?
- Coherence and Cohesion. Is it organised, paragraphed, and easy to follow?
- Lexical Resource. Range, precision and appropriacy of vocabulary, plus spelling and word formation.
- Grammatical Range and Accuracy. Variety of structures, and how many sentences contain errors.
The four criteria are averaged equally within a task. The two task scores are then combined as one part Task 1 and two parts Task 2. So a Task 1 band of 6 with a Task 2 band of 7 gives a Writing band of about 6.5, and the same numbers the other way round also give 6.5, but the Task 2 number is the one worth an hour of practice.
Your overall test score is the average of the four papers, rounded to the nearest half band, with a quarter rounding up. A Writing band that moves from 6 to 6.5 can move your overall score by a quarter of a band, which is often the difference between meeting a requirement and missing it.
What each band looks like on the page
This is the column the official table does not print. It is written from the public descriptors, applied to what candidates actually write.
| Band | Task Response | Coherence | Vocabulary | Grammar |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 8 | Every part answered, ideas developed with real detail | Logical throughout, paragraphing invisible because it works | Precise and natural, including less common words used correctly | Wide range, majority of sentences error free |
| 7 | All parts answered, clear position, ideas developed but some thin | Clear progression, linking is varied and not mechanical | Some less common vocabulary, occasional wrong word choice | Frequent complex sentences, most of them accurate |
| 6 | All parts addressed, some more than others, ideas sometimes unsupported | Organised, but linking is repetitive or overused | Adequate for the task, repetition of the question's own words | Mix of simple and complex, errors present but meaning is clear |
| 5 | Partial answer, position unclear or drifting, ideas listed not developed | Some organisation, paragraphing missing or illogical | Limited range, noticeable errors in spelling and word form | Limited structures, frequent errors that slow the reader |
| 4 | Does not address the task properly, or the format is wrong | Ideas not arranged coherently, no clear progression | Very limited, repeated basic words, errors cause difficulty | Very limited structures, errors dominate |
Read across your own essay honestly with this table. Most candidates who are stuck at 6 are not stuck on grammar. They are stuck on the first column, because they wrote well about the topic instead of answering the instruction.
The same paragraph at three bands
One prompt: many people believe that public libraries are no longer necessary.
Band 5. "Library is very important for people. Many peoples go to library for read books and study. But now internet is everywhere and people can find information in internet. So library is not necessary for some people but for other people it is necessary."
Ideas are present but repeated rather than developed. Articles and plurals slip throughout. The position moves in the last sentence.
Band 6. "Public libraries are still important for many people. A lot of people go to the library to read books and to study in a quiet place. However, the internet has made information easier to get at home, so fewer people need the library for research. In my opinion, libraries are still necessary because not everyone has a computer."
Organised, clear, and correct in most sentences. What holds it at 6 is the vocabulary, which reuses the prompt's own words, and the ideas, which are stated and not explained.
Band 7. "Public libraries remain valuable, though the reason has shifted. Their original purpose, providing access to books that individuals could not afford, has been weakened by the internet. What has replaced it is less visible: a library is one of the few indoor places a person can spend a day without paying for anything. For a student in a crowded flat, or an applicant using the free computers to submit forms, that access is not a convenience but a condition of participating."
The claim is specific, the mechanism is explained, and the example is concrete. Notice that the grammar is not exotic. The gap between 6 and 7 here was made of ideas and precision, not of harder tenses.
What to do today
Take an essay you have already written and score only the first criterion against the table above, honestly. Ask three questions: did I answer every part of the instruction, is my position the same in the conclusion as in the introduction, and does each body paragraph explain its reason rather than restate it.
Then paste the same essay into Bandly and compare. Bandly returns an estimated band for each of the four criteria, with the sentences the estimate is drawn from, so you can see whether the model reads your answer the way you just did. The numbers are estimates from a scoring model, not a marked result, so use them to find the weakest criterion rather than as a prediction of your exam day score.
Find out what this essay would score
Paste your own answer and Bandly returns an estimated band for each of the four criteria, with the sentences that pulled the score down. Under a cent an essay, about six seconds.
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