Your Speaking band is not one number — it is four. The official scoring page lists the criteria as "Fluency and coherence, Lexical resource, Grammatical range and accuracy, Pronunciation", and adds:
"Each of the criteria carry equal weighting and the overall average gives the IELTS score for Speaking."
That sentence should change how you prepare. "Speak more fluently" is not a plan — finding the one criterion that is actually pulling your average down, and fixing that, is. Each of the four fails in its own recognisable way, and each failure shows up on a recording of your own voice.
The failure
The failure this page prevents is untargeted practice: more and more speaking without ever diagnosing which criterion is weak. Because the four are averaged equally, a candidate at 7 on three criteria and 5 on the fourth does not need to get better at everything — they need to find the 5. The official test itself is recorded ("The Speaking test is a face-to-face interview between the test taker and an examiner. The Speaking test is recorded."), so practise the same way: record yourself answering a real task, then run the four checks below.
Failure 1 — Fluency and Coherence: the pause that loses the thread
The current official descriptors draw the 6/7 line precisely. Band 6:
"Able to keep going and demonstrates a willingness to produce long turns. Coherence may be lost at times as a result of hesitation, repetition and/or self-correction."
Band 7:
"Able to keep going and readily produce long turns without noticeable effort. Some hesitation, repetition and/or self-correction may occur, often mid-sentence and indicate problems with accessing appropriate language. However, these will not affect coherence."
Read that carefully. Band 7 still allows hesitation — what it does not allow is hesitation that breaks coherence. A pause while you reach for a word, mid-sentence, is named in the Band 7 text itself. A long silence while you search for something to say — an idea, an opinion, an example — is the pause that costs you, because when you restart, the thread is often gone.
Detect it: record a Part 3-style answer and count every pause longer than about two seconds. For each one, ask: was I searching for a word, or for an idea? Then listen to what you said after the pause — did it continue the sentence, or start a new one from nowhere?
Fix it: idea-pauses are a content problem, not a language problem. Practise generating a position plus one reason plus one example on unfamiliar topics before you worry about phrasing — the language-level hesitation is the kind the descriptor tolerates.
Failure 2 — Lexical Resource: the recited "advanced" word
The classic self-sabotage here is bolting memorised "band 9 vocabulary" onto answers — chunks learned from lists and deployed whether or not they fit. IDP's official advice is blunt:
"Memorised language doesn't give the examiner an accurate measure of your English-language skills. The examiner will be able to tell if you have memorised your answers and this may influence your final band score."
IDP adds that "it is never advisable to memorise answers in preparation for your IELTS test" and that examiners "are well trained to spot them." A precise ordinary word you control beats an impressive word you recite — the recited chunk is exactly what the examiner is trained to hear.
Detect it: on your recording, listen for phrases that come out noticeably faster, flatter and more polished than the speech around them — that contrast is what recitation sounds like. Flag any phrase you have used, word for word, in three different practice answers.
Fix it: for each flagged chunk, replace it with the plainest words that say the same thing, then check you can rephrase the idea a second way. Paraphrase under pressure is usable vocabulary — a chunk you cannot rephrase is a script.
Failure 3 — Grammatical Range and Accuracy: playing safe in one tense
The trap here is the opposite of the vocabulary trap: instead of over-reaching, candidates under-reach — parking the whole answer in simple present, short sentence after short sentence, because it feels safe. But the criterion's name on the official scoring page is "Grammatical range and accuracy" — range is half of it. An answer with no errors and no range is not playing it safe — it is capping one quarter of your score. The band-by-band wording for this criterion sits in the official Speaking Band Descriptors PDF linked below, and is worth reading in full.
Detect it: on your recording, tally the verb forms you actually used. One minute of speech entirely in one tense, with no conditional, no comparison, no past reference, is the one-tense answer — even if every sentence was correct.
Fix it: pick tasks that force range naturally — a Part 2 cue card about a past event pushes past forms, a Part 3 question about the future pushes speculation and conditionals — rather than inserting "complex structures" for their own sake.
Failure 4 — Pronunciation: chasing an accent instead of intelligibility
Here the failure is spending months trying to sound British or American. That is not what the scale measures. Accent appears in the current descriptors only through its effect on being understood — Band 8 Pronunciation says:
"Can be easily understood throughout. Accent has minimal effect on intelligibility."
And IDP's official tips note that "the IELTS examiner understands a wide range of accents so will be able to understand what you say", adding: "If you can communicate well, then there is nothing to worry about." The goal is intelligibility, not accent. No official source makes a blanket "accent is not penalised" claim, so we will not either — but nothing in the descriptors rewards sounding native.
One structural oddity worth knowing: Band 7 Pronunciation has no description of its own. In the official descriptors it is defined purely by reference — a Band 7 "displays all the positive features of band 6, and some, but not all, of the positive features of band 8." Anyone selling you a standalone "Band 7 pronunciation checklist" is inventing it.
Detect it: play your recording to someone who does not know you — or shadow-transcribe it yourself a week later — and mark every word that is hard to catch. Those specific words and sounds are your list. An accent that stays fully understandable is not on the list.
Fix it: drill only the marked words and the sounds they share, and practise chunking — grouping words into natural phrases with stress on the ones that carry meaning — which the Band 6 descriptor names directly ("Chunking is generally appropriate").
What is not published
- There is no official raw-to-band table for Speaking. Official "average marks" conversion tables exist for Listening and Reading only — your Speaking band comes from the four criteria, averaged.
- Two official descriptor versions circulate publicly with different wording — an older Cambridge-hosted "public version" and the current ielts.org PDF. Everything quoted above is from the current ielts.org version.
- Examiners' internal guidance — for example, exactly how a spotted memorised answer is handled — is not public. The IDP wording quoted above is as specific as official sources get.
What actually costs you
- Practising "speaking" in general when one criterion is doing the damage — the average hides it.
- Idea-searching silences that break coherence — the pause type Band 7 explicitly does not allow.
- Recited vocabulary the examiner is trained to spot, per IDP's own wording.
- A grammatically flawless answer delivered entirely in one tense — accuracy without range.
- Months of accent imitation instead of a short list of words people actually mishear.
Try one
Record yourself on a real task, run the four checks, and find your weak quarter.
[Try a Speaking task →] — one full task, marked, no card required.