Appealing an IELTS test result

gaf1983

I don't know if this is the right place to post this, but a colleague of mine from India recently took the IELTS test as he needs a band of 7.0 to help with his Canadian visa requirements. While English is his second language, he went to English-medium primary and secondary schools in India and then did an Undergraduate and Masters in Ireland, also in English - he has been living here for 6 years in total. My point is, his spoken English is excellent - he uses it every day at work. Anyway, he got over 7.0 in both Listening and Reading, but 6.0 in Writing and Speaking. He wasn't too surprised with Writing, as he acknowledges he can be a bit weak there, but we were both surprised by his score in the Speaking section. He's wondering should he appeal his result.

Are there any TEFL teachers here who have experienced their students appealing IELTS scores, what were the outcomes? Does anybody know if it's worthwhile appealing? He only needs to get the Speaking bumped up to 6.5 to satisfy the requirements.

peanuthead

In my experience with IELTS, my students are always disappointed. It's an exam that is difficult, more so than cambridge and it has a bad name in terms of pass rates (this is down to my personal experience of what I have seen/heard - I have no statistics to back this up)

Was this his first time doing the exam? He could have underperformed due to nerves?

I don't know about the appeal procedure, but he could actually do the exam again.

gaf1983

Thanks peanuthead, yes he had to take the IELTS exam before he came to study in Ireland, and got a band score of 6.0, which was enough to get him entry at the Institute of Technology he did his undergrad in. He got that score while living in India - he has been using English on a daily basis since arriving in Ireland 5 years ago, so we were both surprised when he only got 6.0 despite having obviously improved his spoken level.

He has 6 weeks or so to appeal, and that costs €95. To retake the test costs €180, and he may go down in some of the other areas.

dapto1

I my experience students generally don't have their scores changed after appeal. The criteria are quite strict and the examiners are held accountable, so are very careful that in the scores they give are accurate. However, it does happen and if it is only one skill that needs to go up by 0.5 then maybe it is worth it.

I agree with peanuthead, in my experience my students have often found it more difficult than they expected. People often think the speaking part of the test will be the easiest to get marks in, but that's not necessarily the case.

As with most exams, you need to approach it in a certain way- just being good at English isn't always enough. In fact, native speakers sometimes have to take the exam for visa purposes and get a nasty shock when they see their results!

I would highly recommend the following website: http://www.dcielts.com/speaking/ There are some very good tips there, and I particularly recommend studying the band score descriptors.