Mastering IELTS Speaking: Enhancing fluency and coherence

One of the key criteria you are marked on in the IELTS Speaking test is Fluency and coherence, which is worth 25% of your total band score.  Let’s have a closer look at this rating criteria and see what examiners look for.  

Compare Speaking performances across bands 5 to 8, with a particular focus on the Fluency and coherence assessment criteria in Part 3 of the IELTS Speaking test.

What does "Fluency" and "Coherence" mean?

Fluency looks at:

• your ability to keep speaking at a natural speech rate (not too fast, not too slow).

• your ability to keep speaking without pausing, repetition or stopping to think what to say.

Coherence looks at:

• the organisation of your thoughts and ideas.

• your use of discourse markets and cohesive devices (connectors, conjuctions, and pronouns).

• your ability to answer questions relevantly.

To give yourself a chance to rate highly in Fluency and coherence, make sure you try to support your ideas and opinions. Try to avoid giving brief answers when you can so you can show the examiner that you are able to develop your language.  

To give you an idea, here are the descriptions from the different band levels:  

Band 6: Is willing to speak at length 

Band 7: Speaks at length without noticeable effort 

Band 8: Speaks fluently  

Develops topics coherently and appropriately 

One thing that can affect your Speaking score for Fluency and coherence is having pauses or breaks in your speech.  Sometimes people do this because they are trying to think of the right grammar or word choice to express what they want to say.  Other times, it can happen because you are trying to think of ideas.  Pausing and hesitation is a natural part of spoken language, so it is okay to do this at times, but it shouldn’t be something that dominates your speaking.    

Let’s compare some of the different band levels according to the Speaking test criteria:    

Band 3: Speaks with long pauses  

Band 4: Cannot respond without noticeable pauses  

Band 5: Produces simple speech fluently, but more complex communication causes  fluency problems  

Band 6: May lose coherence at times due to hesitation  

Band 7: May demonstrate language-related hesitation at times  

Band 8: Hesitation is usually content-related and only rarely to search for language  

Be careful with the speed of your speech.  Speaking too slowly can impact your score because it reduces the amount of language you produce.  However, speaking at a high speed does not mean you have good fluency.  You should try to speak at a natural pace and not race through your answers.    

This is what the band descriptors say for some of the lower levels:    

Band 4: May speak slowly  

Band 5: Usually maintains flow of speech but uses slow speech to keep going  

Connectives and discourse marks are an important part of Fluency and coherence as they help join your speech and ideas together in a logical way, which can help the listener follow what you are trying to say.  This is very similar to what we do in writing.    

Connectives can include words like:  so, because, therefore, as a result, or, etc.  These are useful to connect your clauses together in a logical way and give an indication of what you want to talk about (e.g. ‘because’ means you are going to give a reason for something).    

Discourse markers are natural expressions we use to keep our speech going and can help give an indication of your tone or attitude.  These can be phrases like: actually, in fact, well, probably, unfortunately, etc.  Sometimes, they can be used as fillers instead of pausing for a few moments to help keep your flow of speech going.    

Importantly, when using connectives and discourse markers, try not to overuse them.  Let’s compare the different band levels:    

Band 4: Links basic sentences but with repetitious use of simple connectives  

Band 5: May over-use certain connectives and discourse markers  

Band 6: Uses a range of connectives and discourse markers but not always appropriately  

Band 7: Uses a range of connectives and discourse markers with some flexibility  

Coherence in speaking is related to how your ideas flow and are connected.  It is also about how easy or difficult your ideas are to follow.  Logical speech, with good use of connectives and discourse markers helps the listener understand what you are saying.    

A loss of coherence is an indication of a lower band level:    

Band 4: Some breakdowns in coherence  

Band 6: May lose coherence at times  

Band 7: Speaks at length without noticeable loss of coherence  

Band 8: Develops topics coherently  

Learn more about the assessment criteria IELTS examiners use and how the Speaking test is scored. You can also download the IELTS Speaking test assessment criteria as a PDF.

If you want to improve your Speaking band scores, you can access our wide range of IELTS Preparation Materials and Practice Tests.

You can also get premium preparation with IELTS Speaking Coaching -- an official IELTS mock Speaking test for test takers who need to boost their Speaking score. This is a 45-minute coaching session with an experienced IELTS teacher.