IELTS Writing Marking Scheme

IELTS Writing Task 1 and Task 2 scores are calculated using 4 criteria:

Task Achievement (TA) = how well you answer the question.
To increase score for TA:
- present the information accurately
- answer all parts of the task
- provide a clear overview
- highlight key features and support detail with data (Academic task 1)
- give a clear position, have a definite opinion (Task 2 and General task 1)

Coherence and Cohesion (CC) = how well is your text structured.
To increase score for CC:
- manage paragraphing
- make sure that each paragraph has a central idea
- use linking words and cohesive devices (firstly, in contrast, thus, in my opinion, to sum up etc)

Lexical Resource (LR) = how good is your vocabulary.
To increase score for LR:
- use a wide range of vocabulary
- use less common lexical items
- avoid errors in spelling and word formation

Grammatical Range and Accuracy (GRA) = how good is your grammar.
To increase score for GRA:
- use a wide range of grammatical structures and tenses
- manage punctuation
- avoid errors in sentences

IELTS Writing score calculation

Each of these four criteria receives a score from 0 to 9 points. After that, an arithmetic mean is calculated to determine the task's total score.

For example, if Task 1 gets following marks:

Task Achievement: 6.0,
Coherence and Cohesion: 7.5,
Lexical Resource: 7.0,
Grammatical Range and Accuracy - 7.5.

then score for IELTS Task 1 is (6.0+7.5+7.0+7.5)/4 =7.0.

IELTS writing total score

Note that Writing task 2 weights two times more than Writing task 1.

So if you get 8.0 for task 2 and 6.5 for task 1, the total score for IELTS Writing Section is 8.0*(2/3)+(6.5)*1/3=7.5.