IELTS Band Descriptors: every official criterion, explained
IELTS Band Descriptors explained: the four Writing criteria and four Speaking criteria, what separates band 6 from 7 on each, why Reading and Listening have none, plus the official PDFs.
Two examiners mark your IELTS Writing and Speaking, and they are not reading for a general impression. They are checking your performance against a published list of criteria, four for each skill, and scoring each one from 0 to 9. Those criteria are the Band Descriptors. Learn what they actually reward and your score stops being a mystery; ignore them and you are guessing at what "a better answer" means.
This is the map of the whole system: which skills have descriptors and which don't, the four Writing criteria and the four Speaking ones, what the jump from band 6 to band 7 looks like on each, and where to find the official public PDFs. Each criterion has its own deep dive; this page is the overview that ties them together.
Only Writing and Speaking have Band Descriptors
Start with the thing most guides blur. Band Descriptors exist for Writing and Speaking only, because those are the two skills a human examiner marks. Reading and Listening have no descriptors at all. They are marked out of 40 by a raw-score-to-band table, one mark per question, no interpretation (Reading band score, Listening band score).
So a search for "reading band descriptors" or "listening band descriptors" is looking for something that doesn't exist. What those sections have is a conversion table, not criteria. This matters for how you study: Reading and Listening improve by getting more answers right, while Writing and Speaking improve by moving up specific descriptors, which is a different kind of work.
Public version vs examiner version
IELTS publishes a public version of the descriptors, the one you can and should read. Examiners use a more detailed examiner version that is not released. The public version is enough to study from, because it names the same criteria and the same band-by-band progression. When a site offers an "examiner version PDF," treat it with caution; the official public descriptors are on the British Council and IELTS.org sites, revised May 2023.
The four Writing criteria
Writing is marked on four criteria, each worth a quarter of the mark for that task. Three are shared across both tasks; the first one changes name and focus between Task 1 and Task 2.
- Task Achievement (Task 1) / Task Response (Task 2). Whether you did what the question asked. On Task 1 that means covering the data with a clear overview; on Task 2 it means addressing all parts of the prompt with a clear position. This is the criterion candidates most often lose without noticing, because a fluent answer to the wrong question still fails it.
- Coherence and Cohesion. Whether your ideas are organised and connected. Band 7 wants "a range of cohesive devices including reference and substitution is used flexibly," not a linking word bolted to every sentence.
- Lexical Resource. Your vocabulary range and accuracy. Band 7 rewards flexibility and precision, plus "an awareness of style and collocation." Reaching for rare words to look advanced pulls the mark the other way.
- Grammatical Range and Accuracy. Your sentence structures and how error-free they are. Band 7 wants "a variety of complex structures" where "error-free sentences are frequent," which is range and accuracy together, not one at the cost of the other.
The single most useful thing to know is where band 6 becomes band 7, since that is the wall most people hit:
| Writing criterion | Band 6 | Band 7 |
|---|---|---|
| Task Response (Task 2) | Addresses all parts, some more than others; the conclusions can be unclear | Addresses all parts, with a clear and developed position |
| Coherence & Cohesion | Reasonably organised; cohesion can be faulty or mechanical | Clear progression; cohesive devices used flexibly |
| Lexical Resource | Adequate vocabulary; errors don't impede meaning | Flexibility and precision; less common items, collocation awareness |
| Grammatical Range | Mix of simple and complex forms, limited flexibility | Variety of complex structures; frequent error-free sentences |
One more mechanic decides your Writing band: Task 2 counts for twice as much as Task 1. Your four-criterion average on each task gives a task band, and the two combine with Task 2 double-weighted, then round to the nearest half band. The full arithmetic is in how IELTS band scores are calculated.
The four Speaking criteria
Speaking is marked on four criteria too, each a quarter of the mark, across the whole 11-to-14-minute interview. The Speaking Band Descriptors deep dive covers all four band by band; here is the shape.
- Fluency and Coherence. Whether you keep going and stay easy to follow. Band 7 is "able to keep going and readily produce long turns without noticeable effort", linking ideas with a range of connectives, while band 6 is willing to speak at length but repeats and self-corrects.
- Lexical Resource. The same criterion name as Writing, judged differently: it rewards paraphrase, and at band 7 some less common and idiomatic vocabulary used with awareness.
- Grammatical Range and Accuracy. A range of structures and how often they come out clean. Band 7 produces frequent error-free sentences; band 6 mixes simple and complex with more slips.
- Pronunciation. How intelligible and controlled your speech sounds. The descriptor here has a quirk worth knowing: band 7 is defined as showing all the positive features of band 6 and some, but not all, of band 8, so you climb it by adding features, not by chasing an accent.
What the descriptors are not
Three misreadings cost people marks, so name them.
The descriptors are not a word count or a template. Hitting 250 words or memorising an essay skeleton satisfies none of the four criteria on its own; a templated answer often reads worse on Coherence because the joins are mechanical.
They are not a checklist you can fake. "Use big words" backfires on Lexical Resource, and "use complex sentences" backfires on Grammatical Range, because both criteria mark accuracy alongside range. A wrong complex sentence scores lower than a correct simple one.
The weighting is also unforgiving. Because each criterion is 25%, your band sinks to your weakest one rather than rising with your strongest. A Writing answer that is band 8 on vocabulary and band 5 on task response is not a 6.5 by luck; it is capped by the criterion you neglected.
Where the official PDFs are
For the full band-by-band tables, go to the source rather than a re-hosted copy. The official public descriptors, revised May 2023, are published by the British Council: the Writing band descriptors PDF and the Speaking band descriptors PDF. The scoring overview sits on IELTS.org. Anything hosted on a document-sharing site is a copy, sometimes an outdated one, so check the May 2023 date before you trust a table.
The descriptor that's costing you the 0.5
Reading the descriptors is step one. The harder step is knowing which of the four is holding your band down, because a stuck 6.5 is almost never a flat 6.5 across all four. It is usually band 7 on three criteria and band 6 on one, and that single criterion is where your next half band lives.
That is what IELTS Drills is built to surface. Instead of a vague "band 6.5," feedback comes back tagged to one Band Descriptor, so you can see that your Task Response is a 7 but your Coherence is the 6 dragging the average down, and spend your five minutes a day on that one criterion rather than rewriting whole essays. The four-axis view is the whole point: you can only close the 0.5 gap once you know which axis it sits on.
Frequently asked questions
How many IELTS Band Descriptors are there? Four for Writing (Task Achievement or Task Response, Coherence and Cohesion, Lexical Resource, Grammatical Range and Accuracy) and four for Speaking (Fluency and Coherence, Lexical Resource, Grammatical Range and Accuracy, Pronunciation). Each is worth 25% of that skill's mark.
Are there Band Descriptors for Reading and Listening? No. Those two are marked out of 40 with a raw-score-to-band table, not by criteria. Only the examiner-marked skills, Writing and Speaking, have descriptors.
What's the difference between the public and examiner versions? The public version is published for candidates and is enough to study from. The examiner version has more detail and is not released. Both use the same criteria and the same band scale.
Is Task Achievement the same as Task Response? No. Task Achievement is the Writing Task 1 criterion; Task Response is the Writing Task 2 one. They test related but different things, which is why the two tasks are marked separately.
Where can I download the official Band Descriptors PDF? From the British Council and IELTS.org, revised May 2023. The Writing and Speaking PDFs are the official public versions; prefer them over document-sharing re-uploads.
Do the four criteria carry equal weight? Yes, each is 25% within its skill. For the overall Writing band, though, Task 2 counts twice as much as Task 1, so a weak Task 2 costs more than a weak Task 1.
The bottom line
The Band Descriptors are the rulebook for the two skills a human marks: four criteria each for Writing and Speaking, scored 0 to 9, with Reading and Listening handled by conversion tables instead. You lift a Writing or Speaking band by moving up specific criteria, so read the public version, find which one is capping you, and work that one. The per-criterion deep dives break each down band by band, Task Response, Coherence and Cohesion, Lexical Resource, Grammatical Range and Accuracy and the Speaking descriptors, and IELTS Drills tells you which one is costing you the 0.5, five minutes a day.
