Blog

We asked one the IELTS examiners that work with us what they saw as the biggest factor that stopped many candidates getting higher scores in IELTS speaking and writing.  She said, overwhelmingly, that accuracy was the biggest problem for a lot of people.  Here are her comments.

Articles, articles articles (a, an, the).  They are really difficult for a lot of English learners, especially those that don’t have them in their language but they are really important in IELTS writing.  If a candidate cannot use articles accurately (for the most part) then it is nearly impossible for them to get into Band 7 for  Grammar.  To get into band 7.0 for Grammar in IELTS writing, the majority of sentences need to be error-free.  Articles occur so frequently in English that is you don’t use them properly, you will have mistakes in the majority of your sentences so the highest you can go is Band 6 in Grammar.  The problem is that people don’t know that they are making these mistakes.  Maybe their teacher had the same problem (very common!), or they have self-studied and no one has corrected them.  This means that the problem is now fossilised in their English and it is a very difficult habit to break.

We will post more answers from the examiners here at upmyielts.com to see what they think.