What speaking ability does a score of IELTS Band 6 represent?
Watch this Speaking test sample, where Stephen from China talks about 'Hobbies'. Here's why this performance was given a Band 6:
This test taker is willing to speak at length but there are moments when coherence is lost as a result of repetition, self-correction and hesitation and he is unable to answer the question about why people need a hobby. He is able to use a variety of markers to link his ideas (first of all; I guess; like; it depends; at least; so), although these are not always used appropriately. Limitations in his performance are evident when he falls back on fillers such as how to say; how do you say.
He has a wide enough vocabulary to discuss topics at length (China opening up to the world; cut down the working shifts; more work opportunities), but while he uses some natural colloquial expressions (some other guys; that’s sweet), there are also some collocation errors (broaden your friendship; kill the spare time; in the past times; make more troubles). These rarely cause comprehension problems.
He produces a mix of short and complex sentence forms with a variety of grammatical structures. However, overall his grammatical control is variable and errors recur (you are make trouble to the society; people like spend; in the past …people work more … there is a period; may go travel round; we have also get), although these do not impede communication.
His pronunciation is generally clear and he divides the flow of his speech into meaningful word groups with good use of stress and intonation (normally we work eight hours a day, five days a week – that’s forty hours in total). Generally he can be understood, but occasionally some words are hard to catch because of mispronunciation of sounds (bose for ‘both’; yoursels for ‘yourself’; cupper years for ‘couple of years’; zen for ‘then’; word for ‘world’).
