The Four IELTS Writing Criteria, in Plain English

Your IELTS Writing score is not one judgement. It is four separate judgements, made against four published criteria, and then averaged. Most candidates know the names of the four. Far fewer can say what each one is actually asking for, which is why the same essay gets rewritten five times without the band moving.

This post explains each criterion in plain language, shows the sentence that most often costs the mark, and shows what the fixed version looks like.

One thing worth knowing before you read: the criteria are public. IELTS publishes the band descriptors for Writing Task 1 and Task 2. Nothing about the marking is secret. What is difficult is not access to the rules but knowing which rule your own essay is breaking.

How the four scores become one

Each criterion is scored from 0 to 9 and carries equal weight. Your task score is the average of the four, rounded to the nearest half band.

Task 2 is worth twice as much as Task 1 in the overall Writing band, so a weak Task 2 is expensive.

Because the weights are equal, the fastest way to gain half a band is almost never to improve your strongest criterion further. It is to find the one sitting a full band below the others and lift it. A candidate at 7, 7, 7, 5 does not need better vocabulary. They need to fix the 5.

Task Response: did you answer this question

What it asks. Whether you addressed every part of the prompt, took a clear position, and developed your ideas with support rather than repetition.

The sentence that loses it.

There are many advantages and disadvantages to this issue, and this essay will discuss both sides.

This looks like a safe opening. It is the single most common reason a strong English speaker scores 6 here. The prompt asked what you think. The sentence announces that you will not say. When the position is unclear, the descriptors cap this criterion regardless of how good the rest of the writing is.

The fixed version.

I largely agree that private cars should be banned from city centres, although the ban only makes sense in cities that already have reliable public transport.

Clear position, named degree, and a condition that tells the reader what the second body paragraph will do.

The other frequent loss here is a part of the question left unanswered. If the prompt has two questions, both need a paragraph. Answering one well and one briefly is worse than answering both adequately.

Coherence and Cohesion: can the reader follow you

What it asks. Two separate things that candidates often merge. Coherence is whether the ideas are in a sensible order and each paragraph has one job. Cohesion is whether the links between sentences are clear. Paragraphing is named explicitly in the descriptors, so an essay with no paragraph breaks is penalised here directly.

The sentence that loses it.

Firstly, pollution is a big problem. Moreover, traffic is bad. Furthermore, people are unhealthy. In addition, cities are noisy.

Every sentence carries a linking word and none of them link anything. This is what the descriptors call mechanical use of cohesive devices, and it lowers the score rather than raising it. The words were added to the outside of the sentences; the ideas underneath are a list, not an argument.

The fixed version.

Cars are the main source of both problems the city faces. They produce most of the roadside pollution, and because each one occupies road space that a bus could use more efficiently, they also create the congestion that keeps the pollution stationary.

No connector was needed, because the second sentence genuinely follows from the first. The strongest cohesion is usually invisible: pronouns, repeated key nouns, and word order that puts old information first and new information last.

Lexical Resource: precision before rarity

What it asks. Range, precision, appropriacy and spelling. Not difficulty. A common word used exactly is worth more than a rare word used approximately.

The sentence that loses it.

The government should ameliorate the plight of the destitute by implementing pecuniary augmentation.

Every one of those words exists. None of them fit together, and the sentence would not be written by any competent speaker of English. Memorised vocabulary inserted without collocation is visible immediately and marked down for inappropriate use.

The fixed version.

The government should raise unemployment benefits so that the poorest households can cover rent.

Simpler words, more precise meaning, and the collocations are natural: raise benefits, cover rent, poorest households. Examiners are looking for words that belong together, not words that are hard.

Grammatical Range and Accuracy: two numbers, not one

What it asks. Range means the variety of structures you control. Accuracy means the proportion of your sentences that contain no error. The band comes from both together, which is why two different candidates fail here for opposite reasons.

The sentence that loses it, version one. All simple sentences, all correct. Pollution is bad. Cars cause pollution. The government should act. Accurate, and the range is too narrow to score above 6.

The sentence that loses it, version two.

Although many people believes that the government who should be responsible for solving this problem, but in my opinion is not enough.

Ambitious structure, four errors, meaning damaged. Attempting complexity is right, but errors that obscure meaning cost more than the range gains.

The fixed version.

Although many people believe that the government alone should solve this problem, I do not think public action is enough on its own.

One subordinate clause, one main clause, no errors. That is what a band 7 sentence usually looks like. Complexity in IELTS means clause variety, not sentence length. If your sentence is longer than about twenty-five words, it is usually easier to split it than to fix it.

Diagnose before you rewrite

Read your last practice essay once for each criterion, separately, and ask one question each time.

1. Task Response. Cover the question. Can a stranger state my position in one sentence from the introduction alone?
2. Coherence and Cohesion. Does each paragraph have one job I could name in three words? If I deleted every moreover and furthermore, would the paragraphs still hold together?
3. Lexical Resource. Are there words here I would not use in conversation about this topic? Do they collocate, or were they inserted?
4. Grammatical Range and Accuracy. How many sentences contain no error at all? Count them. That fraction matters more than the hardest structure I attempted.

Four passes over one essay teaches more than four new essays, because it shows you which criterion is holding the average down.

Check your own essay

Bandly does exactly this on paper. You paste in an essay, and it scores each of the four criteria separately against the public descriptors and shows the reasoning for each estimate, so you can see which one is your low criterion instead of guessing.

Two honest caveats. The scores are estimates produced by a language model, and they have not been checked against a qualified human examiner, so use them to find your weak criterion and to see whether a rewrite moved it, not as a prediction of your exam result. The reasoning is more useful than the number.

If Task Response is your low criterion, start with To What Extent Do You Agree?. If it is Coherence and Cohesion, start with IELTS Coherence and Cohesion. If it is grammar, start with Complex Sentences and Grammatical Range.