What IELTS Exam is?

About the IELTS Exam

The International English Language Testing System (IELTS) is jointly managed by the British Council, Cambridge ESOL Examinations and IDP Education, Australia.

There are two versions of the test:

• Academic

• General Training.

The Academic test is for students wishing to study at undergraduate or postgraduate level in an English-medium

Environment and the General Training test is for people who wish to migrate to an English-speaking country. There are separate Reading and Writing components for the Academic and General Training IELTS tests.

The IELTS test

There are four components to the test.

1. Listening
2. Reading
3. Writing
4. Speaking

In the Listening test: There are 30 minutes, plus 10 minutes for transferring answers to the answer sheet. There are 4 sections in this part of the test.

In the Reading test: 60 minutes. There are 3 texts in this component, with 40 questions to answer.

In the Writing test: 60 minutes. There are 2 writing tasks. Your answer for Task 1 should have a minimum of 150 words. Your answer for Task 2 should have a minimum of 250 words.

In the Speaking test: 11-14 minutes. There are 3 parts to this component. This part of the test will be recorded.

Timetabling: Listening, Reading, and Writing must be taken on the same day, and in the order listed above. Speaking can be taken up to seven days before or after the other components.

Marking of the IELTS Test

The Listening and Reading components have 40 items, each worth one mark if correctly answered. Here are some examples of how marks are translated into band scores.

Listening;

• 16 out of 40 correct answers: band score 5
• 23 out of 40 correct answers: band score 6
• 30 out of 40 correct answers: band score 7

Reading;

• 15 out of 40 correct answers: band score 5
• 23 out of 40 correct answers: band score 6
• 30 out of 40 correct answers: band score 7

Writing and Speaking are marked according to performance descriptors.

Writing - Examiners award a band score for each of four areas with equal weighting:

1. Task achievement (Task 1)
2. Task response (Task 2)
3. Coherence and cohesion
4. Lexical resource and grammatical range and accuracy

Speaking - Examiners award a band score for each of four areas with equal weighting:

1. Fluency and coherence
2. Lexical resource
3. Grammatical range
4. Accuracy and pronunciation

For full details of how the examination is scored and marked, go to www.ielts.org.

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