– develops topics coherently and appropriatelyĪs you can see from this extract, the fluency level is very high – there are almost no hesitations, she speaks at a good pace with very little repetition. – speaks fluently with only occasional repetition or self-correction hesitation is usually content-related and only rarely to search for language Let’s look at the Fluency and Coherence criteria at Band 8: Er, it’s, they are not part of your family, so they come from different backgrounds and so I think you get a quite good insight into other people’s opinions and… “ So I think for that reason, a hobby is very, very important because usually you, you find there people who are not at your work, working environment. But if you do it in a community like, for example, soccer or rugby or what, whatever, then you in a way share time with people and have the opportunity to get to know each other better, and closer, and exchange ideas and, erm, opinions. If you would, for example, do a hobby where you don’t meet anybody, if you’re hiking or climbing alone, there’s not a big social effect on that I would say. “Well, it’s depending on what your hobby is. What do you think are the social benefits of having a hobby? You can watch it here (extract below from 2:20-3:09): Now let’s look at another example of a candidate at band 8 answering a similar question. However, he does manage to understand and answer the question to some extent. The candidate overuses some discourse markers (he uses ‘I think’ three times), and the complexity of what he wants to say becomes overwhelming ( ‘this is a difficult question’) so that fluency completely breaks down. – produces simple speech fluently, but more complex communication causes fluency problemsĪs you can see, the flow of speech is not really maintained, and there are a number of pauses. – may over-use certain connectives and discourse markers – usually maintains flow of speech but uses repetition, self-correction and/or slow speech to keep going Here are the Fluency and Coherence criteria at Band 5: Yeah, and little bit this is a difficult question I think. You can watch it here (extract below from 0:47-1:08): Below is a response from a candidate who scored 5.0 for speaking. Let’s look at some examples taken from IELTS examiner training videos of speaking Part 3. What is Fluency and Coherence?įirstly, Fluency can be described as the ability to talk at length without hesitation – no searching for words, no long pauses.Ĭoherence is about being able to develop topics and link ideas together in a logical structure without repeating yourself. Now that you understand the speaking section, let’s look at the first of the four grading criteria – Fluency and Coherence – and how that impacts your classroom teaching. The examiner may ask follow-up questions to make it a real discussion.

In the last part, the examiner will ask more questions, but they will be more abstract and academic and will require the candidate to express more complex ideas and opinions. This part takes about 4 minutes in total. The candidate has one minute to prepare, then must speak on the topic for 1-2 minutes. This could be a person, a thing, an event or a future hope. The candidate will see a topic card asking them to describe something. Things like work or study, hometown, travel, hobbies etc. In this part, the examiner will ask the candidate questions on familiar, everyday topics. We have prepared a list of the most important cohesive devices for your IELTS exam.Part 1 – Introduction and Interview.

Once you have the idea of coherence and cohesion, you need to know what are the different types of cohesive devices. However, his team lost some important matches as well, though the few losses cannot suppress his overall fantastic impression.'Īfter reading the discussion above, hope you understand the importance of coherence and cohesion in your writing. Because of his amazing captaincy, his fans address him captain fantastic. Now look at the following example which meets the requirements of both coherence and cohesion:Įxample 2: 'He is a champion captain. In fact, the house(paragraph) is built with construction materials (cohesive devices), but without a proper design (coherence). It is like construction materials are applied without a clear design, as a result a house is built that has no windows, doors etc. This is a paragraph with cohesion, but without coherence. Just a few sentences are written, they are not conveying any clear idea. However the missing things are, logical consistency of idea. In the example above, lexical links and cohesive devices are used to join the sentences. However, Earth is one of the planets in the solar system.' Human is the most sophisticated species on the Earth.

Example 1 : 'He is a champion athlete, and the athletes are good in health.

Cohesion and coherence in ielts