IELTS Speaking Fluency and Coherence: Band-by-Band Guide

Fluency and Coherence is one of the four Speaking criteria and is worth a quarter of your Speaking band. Fluency is how smoothly you keep talking; coherence is how well your ideas connect so the listener can follow them.

What examiners listen for

• Speed and continuity: can you speak at length at a natural pace, without long silences?
• Why you hesitate: pausing to think about what to say is natural; pausing to find how to say it is a sign of a lower band.
• Repetition and self-correction: occasional is normal; frequent restarts break the flow.
• Logical development: do your answers move from point to point, with reasons and examples?
• Linking: do you use connectives and discourse markers (so, that said, the thing is) flexibly and correctly, or the same few mechanically?

Band by band

The table below is a paraphrase in our own words, not the official wording. For the exact descriptors, read the official IELTS Speaking band descriptors (PDF).

Band	What it looks like
9	Speaks smoothly and effortlessly. Any hesitation is about the ideas, never about finding language. Topics are developed fully and logically.
8	Speaks fluently with only occasional repetition or self-correction. Now and then pauses to find a word, but mostly hesitates only over content. Develops topics clearly.
7	Can keep talking at length without obvious effort. There may be some searching for language mid-sentence, some repetition or self-correction, but the message stays clear. Uses a range of linking words flexibly.
6	Is willing and able to give long answers, but sometimes loses coherence through hesitation, repetition or self-correction. Links ideas with a variety of connectives, not always in the right place.
5	Usually keeps going, but relies on repetition, self-correction or slow speech to do so. Overuses certain connectives. Simple ideas come out fluently; more complex ones cause problems.
4	Cannot answer without noticeable pauses and may speak slowly, with frequent repetition. Links basic sentences with the same simple connectives, and the thread is sometimes lost.
3	Pauses often, sometimes for long periods, to search for words. Struggles to link even simple sentences or go beyond simple answers, and often cannot get a basic message across.
2	Long pauses before most words. Very little communication is possible.
1	Essentially no fluency; speech does not hang together at all.

Band 0 is given when a candidate does not attend or does not complete the test.

Features that hold your score down

• Long pauses to search for words in the middle of sentences.
• Constant restarts: I went… I was going… we went to…
• Mechanical linking: Firstly… Secondly… Moreover… In conclusion… in a spoken answer sounds like a memorised essay.
• Very short answers that give the examiner too little to judge your ability to speak at length.
• Memorised speech, which breaks down as soon as the question changes and is not treated as evidence of your real level.

How to move up a band

• From 5 to 6: practise giving longer answers. Use a timer and talk for 2 minutes on everyday topics, even if you make mistakes.
• From 6 to 7: work on the quality of linking. Replace and then… and then… with markers that show relationships: which meant that, so in the end, the reason is.
• From 7 to 8: reduce word-searching pauses by learning vocabulary in chunks (it's not really my thing, I'd have to say), so whole phrases come out at once.
• At every level: use natural fillers like well, let me think, I suppose instead of silence while you plan.

Common mistakes

These examples are original and written for Bee English.

Before (around Band 5):

Firstly, I like my city. Moreover, it is big. Moreover, the transport is, er, is, the transport is good. In conclusion, I like it.

After (around Band 7):

I really like living there, mainly because it's big enough to have everything you need but not so crowded that it's stressful. The transport's a good example: you can get almost anywhere by tram, so I hardly ever drive.

The second version is longer, links ideas with meaning (mainly because, a good example, so) instead of formulas, and flows without restarts.

Related guides

• IELTS Speaking: complete guide
• Lexical Resource
• Part 2: The long turn
• Writing: Coherence and Cohesion

Sources

• IELTS, Speaking band descriptors (PDF)
• IELTS, Scoring in detail