How many correct answers do you need to get 7 in IELTS. It varies!
Throughout the Internet there are claims made that if you get a certain number of answers correct in the IELTS test, then you will get a score of 5, 6, 7, 8 or 9.
Well thanks to the Corruption and Crime Commission of Western Australia, we now learn that that is not so. In fact, it is very unlikely for one to get 8 or 9 as they said in the evidence, that on 21/3/11, evidence by M.D. Duncan, before the Corruption and Crime Commission of Western Australia, on page 67:
Question: The band score that’s calculated there, is that simply calculated by reference to the number of correct answers in the reading title?
Answer: It is, but it changed with each test so we would be indicated – for this particular test, a band score of seven is achieved by getting 38 right, or 32 or whatever it happened to be, so there – yes, each test was dealt with on an individual basis.
So, if you expected to get 9 and it was 38 correct answers for that day, you probably would have to get 40 questions right. I think that would be extremely hard as some questions, from 35 to 40, often tend to be very difficult and ambiguous, to even native speakers of English, such as myself. In fact, one ends up guessing the answer.
You would want to do the test on the day when you could get 32 answers right and be rewarded with an IELTS score of 7. But how would you know what day that would be?
Also, does your English language proficiency change from day to day or is it about the same? Of course it does not but this probably explains why candidates get different results on different IELTS tests.
The question is whether IELTS measures your English language proficiency or how well you do in the test when compared to other candidates, or I suppose, to IELTS computer modelling.
And people actually believe that this is a reliable and valid test. Come on, get real!
http://ieltsinside.wordpress.com/2011/04/11/how-many-correct-answers-do-you-need-to-get-7-in-ielts-it-varies
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