Job Discussion Forums

[hereinbeijing]

Hello,
I know that IELTS Examiners can give "half bands" for a candidate's overall speaking score, i.e. a candidate can get a band 6.5 My question is for the different criteria the examiner uses to come up with the overall speaking score, i.e. lexical resources, fluency, grammatical range and accuracy, and pronunciation, can the examiner give half bands, before he comes up with the candidiate's overall score. For example, could they give a candidate two 6.5 scores, i.e. grammatical range and accuracy, and lexical resources, and then give them two 5.5 scores, for fluency and pronunciation, which would then result in the candidate getting an overall band 6 for the speaking section. I know that these may not be the only criteria the examiner uses, and it may be strange for a candidate to get this combination of scores. I just want to know if the examiner can give half bands for the various criteria(different "sub-sections") when coming up with the candidate's overall score.
Thanks in advance for taking the time to respond to this question.

[Tudor]

No they can't - it must be a whole number. The band descriptors (of which a public version is easily downloadable) describe what a candidate must do in each category in order to achieve a certain band and these bands are given as whole numbers and not .5s.

Incidentally, the examiners don't give overall speaking scores - the administration enter the four individual scores into the system and the computer calculates the overall score.

[theoriginalprankster]