The band descriptors are public. Almost nobody reads them properly. Here is what separates a 6.5 from a 7 in each of the four criteria — and the habits that quietly hold people back.
IELTS speaking is scored against four public criteria, each worth 25%: fluency and coherence, lexical resource, grammatical range and accuracy, and pronunciation. Examiners are trained to match what they hear against written descriptors. They are not scoring whether they liked you, whether your accent sounds British, or whether you said something interesting.
That is good news. It means the gap between a 6.5 and a 7 is usually one identifiable criterion, not a mysterious ceiling.
Band 6 describes someone who can keep going but uses repetition and self-correction noticeably. Band 7 describes someone who speaks at length without noticeable effort, with some hesitation that does not disrupt the message.
The difference is not words per minute. Fast speech with broken structure scores lower than slower speech with clean linking. What examiners listen for is whether you can get out of a corner: you start a sentence, realise it is going wrong, and recover — without stopping the flow.
Practise this deliberately. Take a question, start an answer you know is slightly too ambitious, and finish it anyway. That skill is worth more than another twenty vocabulary words.
Band 7 requires "some flexibility" and the ability to paraphrase successfully. Band 8 requires less common vocabulary used naturally. Notice that "less common" is an 8 criterion — students who cram obscure words to reach a 7 often damage their fluency and their accuracy at the same time.
What actually moves you from 6 to 7 is paraphrasing under pressure: being asked about "public transport" and being able to talk about "commuting", "congestion", "the cost of running a car" without repeating the question's words back.
A useful test: can you answer the same question twice, in a row, without reusing any of your own key nouns? If yes, your lexis is flexible.
A student with perfect simple sentences scores 5–6. A student with ambitious sentences and frequent errors also sits around 6. Band 7 wants a range of complex structures with frequent error-free sentences.
In practice, this means two or three reliable complex structures you can produce under pressure: a conditional, a relative clause, a present perfect for experience. Reliability beats variety here.
The descriptor talks about intelligibility and the use of features such as intonation and stress. There is no accent requirement. An examiner will not penalise a Nigerian, Indian, Spanish or Chinese accent. They will penalise unclear word stress that makes a listener work.
The highest-yield pronunciation work is sentence stress: which word carries the meaning in your sentence. Record yourself answering a Part 3 question and listen for whether the stressed words are the informative ones.
If your limiting criterion is structure, six to ten focused lessons with recorded practice can move you. If it is grammatical accuracy, expect twenty or more, and expect the work to be less fun. Any tutor who gives you a promise instead of a diagnosis is guessing.
The free 25-minute diagnostic exists precisely so that you get a name for the problem before you spend money. Take it, and ask the tutor directly which criterion is capping you.
A 25-minute 1-on-1 lesson with a tutor who coaches your goal. You leave with the name of the problem and one drill — no package required.
Book the free trialEveryone wants a number. The honest answer is a range that depends on which criterion is limiting you — so here is the reasoning, and the four profiles that cover most students.
They are not interchangeable, and the choice is usually made for you by an institution — not by which test feels easier. A practical decision guide.