IELTS Speaking Band 5 to Band 6: what has to change

The arithmetic

Your overall Speaking band is worked out from the average of four equally weighted criterion scores — Fluency and Coherence (FC), Lexical Resource (LR), Grammatical Range and Accuracy (GRA) and Pronunciation (PR) — each marked on its own whole-band scale from 4 to 9. IELTS publishes how the overall band for the whole test is rounded, but it does not publish how a Speaking average that falls between two half bands, such as 6.25 or 6.75, is reported.

Here is one realistic way a candidate moves from Band 5 to Band 6, shown two ways — only the second lands exactly on Band 6:

The second route is the dependable one: all four criteria move up, for a raw average that lands exactly on 6, which is Band 6 as it stands. The first route moves three of them — Fluency and Coherence, Lexical Resource and Grammatical Range and Accuracy — and gives a raw average of 5.75. That sits between Band 5.5 and Band 6, and IELTS does not publish which of the two a Speaking average of 5.75 is reported as, so do not count on three criteria doing the whole job.

The second route is not the only way to land exactly on Band 6: what matters is the total, not which criterion moves. The four criterion scores have to gain four whole bands between them, from any mix of criteria. A candidate whose profile looks different from the ones above can still be exactly 5 or exactly 6.

What each criterion asks for at Band 6

Straight from the descriptor explorer, so this guide never tells a different story from that page:

Fluency and Coherence at Band 6

• You are willing to keep talking at length instead of stopping after a sentence or two.
• The thread does slip at times — a repeated phrase, a correction, a pause while you hunt for a word.
• You have a decent range of linking and signposting expressions.
• Some of them turn up in the wrong place, and at this band that is expected.

Lexical Resource at Band 6

• Your vocabulary is wide enough to talk about a subject at length and to make your meaning clear.
• A few word choices are still not right for the situation, and that does not stop you reaching this band.
• When a word will not come, you usually find a way round it that works.

Grammatical Range and Accuracy at Band 6

• You use a mixture of simple and complex sentences.
• The range is there, but you cannot move around it freely yet.
• Your complex sentences often have mistakes in them.
• Those mistakes rarely stop the listener understanding you.

Pronunciation at Band 6

• You draw on several of the pronunciation features, and your control of them is mixed.
• Some of what you do works well, but you cannot keep it going for a whole answer.
• You are understood from beginning to end.
• Mispronounced words or sounds make you less clear at times.

What moves you from Band 5 to Band 6

Not new content — a change in how the same content is delivered:

Fluency and Coherence

• Band 6 is willing to keep talking at length, rather than doing just enough to survive the question.
• The repeating and the restarting still happen, but only now and then, instead of being what holds the answer together.
• A wider set of linking and signposting expressions turns up, even if some of it lands in the wrong place.

Lexical Resource

• Band 6 has enough vocabulary to discuss a topic at length, not merely to answer the question.
• Your meaning comes across clearly even though a few word choices are still off.
• Saying it another way starts to succeed most of the time, rather than some of the time.

Grammatical Range and Accuracy

• Band 6 mixes simple and complex sentences right through the answer, not once or twice.
• Errors inside the complex sentences rarely get in the way of understanding.
• The range widens, even though how freely you can move around it is still limited.

Pronunciation

• Band 6 uses a range of features with control that comes and goes.
• Some of what you do is genuinely effective; Band 6 asks for that effectiveness to be there, even if you cannot sustain it.
• You are understood all the way through, with mispronounced words or sounds reducing clarity only at moments.

The traps that keep people at Band 5

What actually holds a criterion at Band 5, worth checking against your own recordings:

Fluency and Coherence

• A memorised opening that sounds fluent for ten seconds and then leaves you with nowhere to go.
• Joining every idea with “and then”, which turns a story into a list.
• Playing safe with short sentences to protect the flow, which caps your grammar score instead.

Lexical Resource

• One memorised “advanced” phrase per topic, dropped in wherever it can be made to fit.
• Using a word you have only ever seen written, with a meaning that is nearly right.
• Echoing the question’s own words instead of putting them differently.

Grammatical Range and Accuracy

• Staying on safe short sentences so nothing can go wrong, which also means nothing can go up.
• Beginning a long structure with no plan for how it ends.
• Repeating one fossilised mistake — the third-person -s, an article, a preposition — all the way through the test.

Pronunciation

• Reading the gap between 4 and 6 as vague and therefore unimportant — the examiner is still deciding which side of it you fall on.
• Assuming clear individual sounds are enough while the rhythm of the sentence stays flat.
• Speaking louder rather than more clearly.

Where to start

With four criteria to work on, the honest answer depends on which one is actually weakest in your own speaking, not which one this page names first. That said, for candidates moving into Band 6, Grammatical Range and Accuracy and Fluency and Coherence are the two criteria most often found lagging. That is a common pattern, not a rule — check the descriptor explorer against your own recordings before assuming it applies to you.

Two ways to find out which criterion is actually holding you back:

1. The self-assessment asks twelve concrete questions and returns a band range rather than a single number — a more honest estimate than scoring yourself from one recording.

2. The mock test runs a full timed Speaking test in the browser — Part 1, the cue card, then Part 3 — so the weakest criterion shows up under real pressure, not in one rehearsed answer.

Once you know which criterion is lagging, the “what moves you up” and “traps” sections above are the two worth reading closely for it — the other three are there for reference, not because all four need work at once.