IELTS

Two versions

IELTS comes in two versions. Academic is for university study and professional registration. General Training is for work and migration, including to Canada, the UK and Australia. Listening and Speaking are the same in both versions; only Reading and Writing differ.

Test structure

• Listening - about 30 minutes, four recordings.
• Reading - 60 minutes, three sections.
• Writing - 60 minutes, two tasks.
• Speaking - 11 to 14 minutes, a face-to-face interview with an examiner.

The whole test takes about 2 hours 45 minutes and is available on computer or on paper.

Scoring

Each of the four skills is scored on a band scale from 0 to 9, in half-band steps. The overall band is the average of the four skills, rounded to the nearest half band.

For teachers

Choose the version that matches the learner's goal: Academic for university or professional registration, General Training for work and migration. Build practice around the exact task types in each paper, and use the official band descriptors to give targeted, criterion-based feedback.