Obviously the scoring for the Reading and Listening sections of the IELTS test is straight forward.  The examiners work out your score out of 40 and then convert that into the IELTS score depending on the difficulty of the IELTS test you have taken.

For Speaking and Writing sections of the examination there are no individual marks for individual questions.  These sections are marked on an overall assessment of the skills you demonstrate.  There are specific areas on which your English is assessed.  You are given marks in each of these skills areas, and then the IELTs score is calculated.

First of all, for the Writing section, there are the following skills areas.  Each of which will give you 10 marks maximum. 

These skills areas are: 

1. Task Completion (Writing Task 1) or Task Response (Writing Task 2) - 10 marks total
2. Cohesion and Coherence (Structure and Logic of answer) - 10 marks
3. Lexical Resource (Range of vocabulary used) - 10 marks
4. Grammatical Range and Accuracy - 10 marks

For the Speaking section, the skills areas are as follows:

1. Fluency and Coherence - 10 marks
2. Lexical Resource - 10 marks
3. Grammatical Range - 10 marks
4. Pronunciation - 10 marks

The examiner will calculate your total score out of 40 and then apply the general formula that I explained in my previous blog on the Reading and Listening sections. 

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