Grammatical Range and Accuracy: Range Without Errors

Grammatical range and accuracy asks two questions at once: how varied are the structures you attempt, and how often do errors appear when you attempt them? The descriptors are precise about the two ways to fail it. Write only simple sentences and your accuracy cannot save the band, because range is half the criterion. Attempt everything and fill the essay with errors, and range cannot save it either. The bands reward controlled variety.

This is the last part of our series on the four Writing criteria; the hub is How IELTS Writing Is Marked, and the previous part covered lexical resource.

What the criterion measures

The official key assessment criteria define this criterion at sentence level: the range and appropriacy of the structures you use across simple, compound and complex sentences, the accuracy of each, the density and communicative effect of your grammatical errors, and your punctuation. That last item surprises many candidates. Punctuation has no criterion of its own; commas, full stops and apostrophes are scored here.

The sentence level framing is worth noticing too. Coherence and cohesion judges your essay as a whole text; grammatical range and accuracy judges it one sentence at a time. An essay needs to pass both inspections, because the criteria catch different failures.

The ladder from band 5 to band 8

At band 5, the range of structures is limited and repetitive. Complex sentences are attempted but tend to be faulty, and the greatest accuracy comes on simple sentences. Errors may be frequent enough to cause the reader difficulty, and punctuation may be faulty.

At band 6, there is a mix of simple and complex sentence forms, but flexibility is limited, and the complex structures are not as accurate as the simple ones. Errors occur in grammar and punctuation, but they rarely impede communication.

At band 7, a variety of complex structures is used with some flexibility and accuracy. Grammar and punctuation are generally well controlled, and in the descriptors' own words, "error-free sentences are frequent". A few errors may persist, but they do not impede communication.

At band 8, a wide range of structures is used flexibly and accurately, the majority of sentences are error free, and the errors that remain are occasional and unsystematic.

What changes from band 6 to band 7

Read the two bands side by side and the hinge is the clean sentence. At band 6, complex sentences exist but carry errors the simple ones do not. At band 7, complexity no longer costs accuracy every time it appears, and a good share of your sentences contain no errors at all. The band is not asking for perfection. It is asking whether you can leave the safety of simple sentences without the error rate climbing.

That reframes what practice should look like. The band 5 picture, faulty complex sentences with accuracy only on simple ones, describes a writer attempting structures they have not yet controlled. The path to 7 is not more ambition. It is extending the set of structures you can produce cleanly.

Building controlled range

Extend from strength. Take structures you already handle, a conditional, a relative clause, a concession with although, and drill them until they come out clean under time pressure. Two or three complex patterns produced accurately show more range than six produced half right.

Edit for your own errors. Learn which mistakes you personally repeat, then spend the final two minutes of the test checking for exactly those. Every slip you catch converts an error into one of the clean sentences band 7 counts.

Treat punctuation as scored, because it is. A run on sentence or a comma splice is a grammar error here, not a style choice.

Grammatical range and accuracy is a quarter of the band on each task, and it completes the set: with task response, coherence and cohesion and lexical resource, you now have the full picture of how a Writing band is built. How IELTS Writing Is Marked shows how the four combine, and the band score calculator shows what your Writing band does to your overall score.

The public Writing band descriptors and key assessment criteria are published on ielts.org. Descriptors updated May 2023; last checked August 2026.