IELTS grammatical range and accuracy: complex isn't better

Open the practice essays of someone stuck at Writing 6.5 and you'll see the same move on every page: a sentence that starts simple, then grows a "which" clause, then an "although," then a conditional tail, until it collapses under its own weight. Memorised complex-sentence templates, stacked one per paragraph. The Grammatical Range and Accuracy score keeps coming back at 6, and the feedback never once says "write simpler sentences."

That picture is the whole problem. At 6.5, the instinct is to bolt on one more clause to prove range. But the official Band Descriptors put inaccurate complex sentences below accurate simple ones. The structures you added to climb may be the exact thing capping you at 6.

This is a deep dive on one criterion: Grammatical Range and Accuracy (GRA). What it measures, why more complexity backfires, and the four things it rewards instead, with examples you can copy.

What grammatical range and accuracy measures

The name carries two demands joined by "and," and most candidates hear only the first.

Range is the variety of grammatical structures you can use: simple, compound, and complex sentences; relative clauses, conditionals, passives, the occasional participle clause.

Accuracy is whether those structures come out correct: subject-verb agreement, tense, articles, punctuation.

The score lives in the overlap. A wide range produced with constant errors scores below a narrower range produced cleanly, because the descriptor measures both at once, and the second half is where 6.5 essays leak points.

GRA is one of four equally weighted criteria in Writing, alongside Task Response, Coherence and Cohesion, and Lexical Resource. So it's worth a flat 25% of each Writing task's score. The same averaging that decides your overall score repeats one level down inside Writing.

Here's what the public Band Descriptors say at the boundary you care about. At Band 6, "a mix of simple and complex sentence forms is used but flexibility is limited," and errors in grammar and punctuation "occur, but rarely impede communication." At Band 7, "a variety of complex structures" is used, grammar and punctuation are "generally well controlled," and "error-free sentences are frequent." Read them side by side and the lever jumps out: the Band 6 to 7 move isn't more complexity. It's frequent error-free sentences.

The complex-sentence trap

Drop down one band and the trap is spelled out. The Band 5 descriptor says that "although complex sentences are attempted, they tend to be faulty, and the greatest accuracy is achieved on simple sentences." Read that twice. The test is openly penalising complex sentences that come out less accurate than the simple ones you can already write. Ambition without control scores below restraint.

Watch what over-reaching reads like:

Band 6, over-complex: "Although there are many people who believes that the technology, which is developing rapidly, have made our lives easier, but it also bring some problems that affecting the society."

The reach is obvious, and so is the loss of control: "believes," "have made," and "bring" all break agreement, "Although" is pinned to a stray "but," and "that affecting" takes the wrong form. As one sentence, it's nowhere near error-free.

Now the same idea, built from structures the writer actually controls:

Band 7, controlled: "Technology is developing rapidly, and it has made daily life easier. It has also created new problems for society."

Two sentences, both completely correct. One is compound, one is simple, and every clause lands cleanly. Two error-free sentences out of two. That count is exactly what the Band 7 descriptor rewards.

A rough self-check: take your three longest sentences and read each one in isolation. If even one error hides inside it, that sentence isn't one of the error-free ones the examiner is counting. The fix usually isn't a bigger structure. It's breaking the sentence in two so each half can be right.

The four things GRA actually rewards

Strip away the more-clauses instinct and the criterion comes down to four levers. Most learners pour everything into range and treat accuracy as an afterthought. That's backwards, because at the 6-to-7 boundary accuracy does the heavier lifting.

Accuracy: error-free sentences are the unit of measure

Band 7 is defined by the line "error-free sentences are frequent." Notice the unit. The examiner is, in effect, counting how many of your sentences come out completely clean, not how impressive each one looks. That flips the usual fear: a short, correct simple sentence adds to your error-free count, while a long complex sentence with one slipped article doesn't. The clean simple sentence is quietly doing the work the complex one was supposed to do.

Range: variety, not one template on repeat

Range still counts. The Band 7 wording is "a variety of complex structures," and variety is the operative word. Opening every complex sentence with the same "Although..." or the same "There is no doubt that..." reads as one memorised mould, not range. Real range means a relative clause in one sentence, a conditional in another, a passive where it fits, a participle clause now and then. Three different structures used accurately beat the same structure used five times.

Punctuation: the comma splice that quietly costs you

The descriptor names punctuation alongside grammar, and it's where careful writers still bleed marks. The most common leak is the comma splice: joining two full sentences with only a comma. "Pollution is rising, the government must act." Two independent clauses, one comma, and a Band 7 reader notices. The repair is a full stop, a semicolon, or a conjunction: "Pollution is rising, so the government must act." Run-ons and missing commas around non-defining clauses do the same quiet damage.

The structures worth the risk

If you're going to reach, reach for the few structures that pay off when controlled. The relative clause ("a policy that targets emissions") adds precision. The conditional ("if governments acted now, costs would fall") shows you can handle a hypothesis. The complex noun phrase ("the rapid growth of online education") packs detail in without a new clause. Drill those to the point of accuracy and you cover the "variety of complex structures" the descriptor wants, without scattering errors across the page.

Common GRA mistakes that quietly cost 0.5

A few patterns show up again and again in essays scoring 6 on GRA. Subject-verb agreement that breaks once a sentence gets long, especially when a phrase sits between subject and verb ("the number of cars have risen"). Articles dropped or wrongly added ("the society" for society in general, "a research"). Tense drift, where a paragraph slides from present to past and back with no reason. And the broken conditional, where the "if" half and the "would" half don't match.

None of these come from not knowing the rule. That's the point. Most 6.5 writers can spot every one of these errors in someone else's essay. They miss them in their own because the errors surface under load, inside the longest sentences. That alone is a reason to write fewer of them.

Fix grammar in five minutes a day

A full practice essay spreads your attention across all four criteria, so GRA accuracy rarely gets isolated work. You write a whole essay, get "Band 6, some errors," and still can't tell whether your problem is agreement, articles, punctuation, or tense. Targeted drills fix that:

• The error log. Keep a running list of every grammar mistake an examiner or checker flags. After a week or two, three or four error types usually dominate. Those are the only ones worth drilling, and most candidates have fewer recurring errors than they fear.
• The split drill. Take one over-long sentence from a past essay and rewrite it as two or three shorter ones, each fully correct. Train the instinct to break a sentence before it breaks you.
• The one-structure rep. Pick a single structure (say, the relative clause) and write five sentences using it across five different prompts. Check each for your recurring error. Five minutes, one structure, until it runs on its own.

Five minutes, one lever, every day. That's the idea behind IELTS Drills: feedback is tagged to a single Band Descriptor, so when your weak criterion is GRA, you drill agreement or punctuation on their own instead of writing another full essay and hoping the grammar sorts itself out.

If you're not sure GRA is the criterion holding you at 6.5 (it might be task response, coherence and cohesion, or lexical resource instead), the four-axis self-diagnosis here walks through all four so you target the right one. The restraint it asks for is the same one those two reward: control beats reach.

Frequently asked questions

Is grammatical range and accuracy just grammar? Not quite. It's range and accuracy together. A wide range of structures used with constant errors still scores 6, and a narrow range used cleanly can reach 7. The "and" is the whole test.

How many complex sentences do I need? There's no target number. The descriptor asks for "a variety of complex structures," not a quota. A few accurate ones beat a page of broken ones, and well-formed simple sentences help rather than hurt, because Band 7 counts error-free sentences.

How many grammar errors are allowed at Band 7? The official descriptor gives no number. It says "error-free sentences are frequent," that grammar and punctuation are "generally well controlled," and that "a few errors in grammar may persist." In practice that means most of your sentences should be completely clean, with the occasional slip that doesn't impede communication. Anyone quoting an exact error count is guessing, not citing the rubric.

Do simple sentences lower my score? No. Accurate simple sentences add to your error-free count and cost you nothing, as long as they aren't the only thing you write. The problem is a whole essay of simple sentences (no range), not the presence of simple sentences.

Does GRA apply to Speaking? Yes, it's a criterion in both. In Speaking it's judged on natural spoken grammar rather than written punctuation, so comma splices and the like don't apply, but the range and accuracy of your structures still do.

How much is grammatical range and accuracy worth? A flat 25% of each Writing task's score. The four criteria are weighted equally on each task, and the task score is their average before it ever feeds into your overall band, where Task 2 counts for twice as much as Task 1.

The bottom line

Adding another clause is the wrong instinct at 6.5, because complex sentences that come out less accurate than your simple ones are what the lower bands look like. Grammatical range and accuracy rewards something quieter: sentences that are completely correct, a genuine variety of structures rather than one template, and punctuation that holds the clauses together. Get those right and a page of clean, varied sentences will carry you past 6.5.

The test an examiner is applying is simple: how many of your sentences could they not fault? Push that count up, and GRA stops being the criterion that keeps costing you 0.5. With IELTS Drills, that's the kind of feedback you get back: tagged to GRA, five minutes a day.