Disappointed with your IELTS Result?

Hi Srilekha, there is a large gap between your Reading/Listening abilities and your Speaking, with your Writing being the lowest, and it may suggest that you deserve a higher score in writing. If you believe you were unfairly marked, then re-evaluation can help. If your score changes following re-evaluation, the fee you will pay for it will be returned to you. You can ask to re-evaluate only the writing, and your other scores will be safe.

Hi Leng, any change in your score, whether up or down, will result in your remarking fee being refunded. Only if the score remains unchanged the fee isn’t refunded.

Hi Mohammed, the gap between your score in writing and the rest of your scores implies that something may have gone wrong with your writing. Either that, or your score doesn’t reflect your true writing ability. If you were unfairly marked then applying to re-evaluate just the writing may help. Your other scores won’t be changed if you only ask to remark the writing. If your writing score changes, they will refund your fee for remarking. I hope it happens for you, good luck! Let me know how it goes.

Hi John, sorry to hear about this. I don’t think there is a way to appeal the result of remarking. According to IDP website, “A re-mark application may only be submitted once for each test and the outcome provided is final”. You may need to re-take the test.

Hi Shyam, you can apply to remark just your Speaking and Writing, as for chances it’s hard for me to guess, I haven’t heard you speak and haven’t seen your writing. If your score changes as a result of remarking (that is if you get a higher or a lower score), the remarking fee will be refunded.

Hi Harminder, when you apply for remarking the score can go up, go down or stay the same. It is up to the senior examiner assessing your work. To keep your other sub-test scores safe you can apply to get only the writing remarked.

Hi Sneha, if you believe that your writing was unfairly marked, getting your writing remarked can help. You can send your writing task 1 and 2 to our writing correction team so that they can estimate your score. It will give you an idea whether it makes sense to apply for remarking.

Hi Katherine, it’s hard to tell you what your fair Speaking score is without hearing you speak. Our Speaking examiner Adam can tell you how likely you are to get a 7 in Speaking. He worked at the British Council as a writing and speaking examiner for 10 years. To get his feedback you need to take this online Speaking test, and you will get a report telling you what your Speaking score is, in each criterion and overall. The test is very quick and affordable and the feedback is usually given in one day.

Remarking can cause your score to go up, go down, or stay the same, all of these outcomes are possible. If your score changes, the fee you paid for remarking will be refunded.

Hi Fatima, sorry to hear about the low score in Listening 🙁 you can ask to get just the Listening remarked, but it will cost the same as all the components. In the Listening section your answers are compared to a list of correct answers and if any of your answers are different, those answers gets 0 marks. The official time frame it takes to check one module or all modules is the same. I wish you good luck if you decide to go for remarking.

Hi there, I’m really sad to hear about the 5.5 in writing. The only way to get another examiner to recheck your writing is to apply for remarking. The alternative is to re-do the test, which costs more.

Hi John, sorry to hear about the 6.5 in Speaking that’s holding you back. It is impossible for me to guess what your real score should be, and whether the 6.5 you were given is fair or not. Here is what you can do – we have a former IELTS examiner assessing the Speaking tests our students take via this Speaking evaluation service. You can get your Speaking assessed and that will give you certainty whether to prepare and re-take the test or ask to get your test remarked. Adam, our examiner, worked for the British Council for 10 years, and his assessment is highly professional.

Hi Elyria, when they change your score, the final score is the only one you can use.

Hi Prathamesh, one possibility is that some of your answers in listening that you thought were correct, were marked as incorrect. It could have happened because you wrote more words than you were allowed, if the instructions asked to write, say, 1 word and you wrote two or three, or if you misspelled some words. If that happened, re-evaluation won’t help, unfortunately. In general, there is a list of correct answers and if yours were different, they will be marked as incorrect. There isn’t much room for bias and judgement, and for that reason I don’t think that re-evaluation of Listening is going to help.

Hi Nandu, if you believe that your writing was marked unfairly, re-evaluation is your chance to get the score you really deserve. As a result of remarking your score can go up, down or stay the same, depending on the evaluation of a senior examiner who will be checking your work.

Hi Raina, if you only need to get your Reading remarked, the chances of your score changing aren’t great. Reading is clerically marked and there is a list of correct answers, yours are compared to them and if they are different, you don’t get a mark. There isn’t room for judgement and so the score isn’t likely to change if a different person marks your answers.

Hi Mandeep, there is a considerable gap between your other skills and writing, and that suggests that you may deserve a better score. I can’t be sure, of course, because sometimes your score can be negatively affected if you misunderstood the task prompt and didn’t address all of it, or didn’t address it correctly. It’s not just the quality of your writing that counts, it is also the actual content. If your score is changed as a result of remarking, regardless of whether it is up or down, you will get back the remarking fee. Whatever you decide to do, I hope it goes well!

Hi Amandeep, only Writing and Speaking have a chance of the score being changed following remarking, because a different examiner might assess you differently. Your Listening and Reading answers are checked against a list of predefined answers, and if yours are different, it doesn’t matter what examiner marks the paper, you won’t get marks for those answers. In your particular case you need the score in both Speaking and Writing to be 1 band higher for the overall score to be 6.5. You can ask for more than one skill to be remarked, it won’t cost more – the remarking fee is the same regardless of how many skills are rechecked.

Hi Puneet, if all your IELTS skills are roughly at the same level, then it is possible that your writing score will go up to 7 after remarking.

From your two test results it looks like your performance is quite consistent, 0.5 score variation between tests is normal. What is your target score?