The IELTS Test

What is IELTS?

The test most commonly used in Australia for measuring the English language ability of international students is the International English Language Testing System, commonly known as IELTS. The IELTS website includes information about the system. The development of IELTS was supervised by a joint Australian and British team based at the University of Lancaster, England, in 1987-88 and supported by other individuals and committees in both countries. It has been under continuous revision and development ever since.

There are currently more that 400 IELTS test centres in over 120 countries world-wide. A number of IELTS test centres also offer off-site testing, increasing availability to over 150 countries. All IELTS Examiners are trained, certificated and monitored to ensure a standardised testing and assessment system around the world.

The test is offered in two flavours, Academic and General, and consists of four component modules:

• Listening (approx. 30 mins)
• Reading (Academic or General – 60 mins)
• Writing (Academic or General – 60 mins)
• Speaking (11-14 mins)

The first three of these are taken together. The Speaking test, a one-to-one face-to-face recorded interview with an examiner, is taken within a week of the other tests, as arranged by the testing centre.

Interpreting IELTS scores

From pages 4 and 5 of the IELTS handbook you can get a sense of the broad meanings of the Overall Band Scores used to report a candidate's performance on IELTS. There are, however, two important points to retain:

1. Much more informative than the single number of an Overall Band Score is the candidate's IELTS profile, indicating how the candidate has performed on each of the individual test modules. It is entirely possible for a candidate, due to her particular life experiences, to achieve an Overall Band Score of 6.5 with
   • a Speaking score of 8 (near native-speaker level), but
   • a Writing score of 5 (not adequate for academic tertiary study).
   Such a candidate is likely to need at least 5-10 weeks' specialised English language training before undertaking a university degree course in Australia, depending on the demands of the course she wishes to pursue.
2. Each band level covers a substantial range of ability. Performance at the upper level of a given band may be significantly better than performance at a lower level within the same band.

For more on this, see Professor David Ingram on the uses and abuse of IELTS.