So in this video I'm going to look at
how the speaking test is assessed - so how
does an IELTS examiner give you the
band score
well the IELTS examiner uses a form that
is similar to this. This document you can
find in the downloadable resources
section and if i zoom in you can see
there's a description of what the IELTS
candidate actually does so the IELTS
examiner tries to match you with the
correct part of this grid - this table of
descriptions. So I'm going to go through
the different assessment areas. There are
actually four assessment areas that the
IELTS examiner looks at, and they are called fluency
and coherence, lexical resource,
grammatical range and accuracy,
pronunciation. Ok. And you get a band
score for each of these four different
areas and your overall speaking band
school is the average of those four band
scores. So let's look at those 4
assessment areas in more detail. So
fluency and coherence to begin with. This
is about how fluently you speak and how
well your ideas are structured and
linked together. So it's a bit like,
certainly for fluency, a bit like a river
flowing gently down the valley. So do you
speak fluently or do you hesitate? Now, to
get a band 7, for fluency and coherence, you
need to speak at length without
noticeable effort - you don't need to seem that
you're trying to speak at length but you
can have the occasional hesitation over
language where you stop and you think
about some language
if you do that, that's ok for a band
7 still, and you should try to use a
range of connective a range of linking
words. The second assessment area is
called lexical resource which is
basically words and phrases. It's the
range and appropriateness of your
vocabulary. So how wide a range of
vocabulary do you have, and do you use it
naturally? Do you use it correctly? So
it's your range of vocabulary. To get a
band 7 you should use a vocabulary
with some flexibility and you should use
some less common and idiomatic
vocabulary and maybe show some awareness
of collocation - how words go together -but
you can, for band 7, produce
occasional errors. You don't need to be
perfect to get a band 7.
Grammatical range and accuracy is the
range and accuracy of your grammar, the
nuts and bolts of the language and
to get a band 7 you need to use a
variety of complex structures, for
example conditional sentences - if...
would conditionals - relative clauses and
you should speak frequent error-free
sentences. You can make some
grammatical mistakes, that's ok, but your
error-free sentences should be frequent,
should be most of the time. And
pronunciation is about how natural you
sound and how easy you are to understand.
So do you pronounce words clearly and
correctly?
Do you use a range of pronunciation
features such as connecting words
together. So is it fluent?
This is for a band 7:
you need to use a range of pronunciation
features with only a few mistakes. Now
pronunciation features are things like
connecting words together, so for example
I would say "I wentuh work"
Some people say: "I went to work"
But a natural way
of speaking English is connecting words
together: "I wentuh work" "wentuh...wentuh"
instead of "went to". That's a pronunciation
feature, so do you connect words together?
Do you stress words correctly? So it's about
how natural you sound when you
speak and also you can generally be
understood throughout. Accent has only a
small effect on understanding. So that's to
get a band 7. It's important to
understand that even to get a band 9
you do not need to have a British or
American accent. Pronunciation is not
about accent. It's about sounding natural
when you speak.
Ok? Using those pronunciation
features.
So don't worry about having an accent,
accents are ok. It's about sounding natural
when you speak. So that's basically how
the speaking test is assessed.