IELTS Academic

Who it's for

IELTS Academic is for people applying to universities and colleges, or registering with a professional body (for example in nursing, medicine or engineering). If your goal is work or migration, see IELTS General Training instead.

How it differs from General Training

Listening and Speaking are exactly the same in both versions. Only Reading and Writing change:

• Reading - three long texts from books, journals, magazines and newspapers, academic in style.
• Writing Task 1 - describe visual information: a graph, table, chart, map or process (at least 150 words).
• Writing Task 2 - an essay responding to an argument or problem (at least 250 words).

Test structure

• Listening - about 30 minutes, four recordings.
• Reading - 60 minutes, three academic texts, 40 questions.
• Writing - 60 minutes, two tasks (Task 2 is worth more).
• Speaking - 11 to 14 minutes, a face-to-face interview in three parts.

Scoring

Each skill is scored from 0 to 9 in half-band steps; the overall band is the average, rounded to the nearest half band. Most universities ask for an overall 6.0 to 7.0, often with a minimum in each skill.

For teachers

Anchor Academic practice in the real task types: data-description language for Writing Task 1, a clear four-paragraph essay model for Task 2, and skimming and scanning for the longer academic readings. Give feedback against the official band descriptors for Task Achievement, Coherence and Cohesion, Lexical Resource and Grammatical Range.