Disappointed by your IELTS Result?

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If you are disappointed by your IELTS result, you have 2 options:

1. Take the IELTS test again or
2. Ask for re-marking.

Many people were asking me about option # 2 and here is an explanation of what’s involved.

If you believe that you deserve a better score than you were awarded, you can ask for re-marking of your results. You can ask to re-mark the whole test or any part of it (Listening, reading, Writing, Speaking). Of course there is a fee, which is roughly a half of IELTS test fee. If your result is changed to a higher score, the fee is refunded.

If you decided to go for remarking, here is what you need to do. Within 6 weeks of your test date, get a form called “IELTS Enquiry on Results Form” from your test center, fill your name, address, the tests you want to have remarked, sign and date it. Pay the fee and expect your answer back within 6 weeks from the day they receive it at Cambridge.

Here is what happens next: your test paper, your writing or your tape recorded at the Speaking test will be re-marked by a different examiner – not the one in your local test center, but by a trained clerical marker (for Reading and Listening answers) or Cambridge ESOL-appointed Examiner, employed by British council or IDP.

In my opinion, unless you are very sure they’ve misread your answers, Reading and Listening don’t give you much of a chance to get a higher score. On the other hand, Writing and Speaking – here your chances are much better, because the score does depend on who marks it, to some extent.

Let me tell you a true story of A from Romania. She took IELTS and was very confident and positive about her results, however… the results arrived and she got only 6.5 in Speaking. A immediately appealed, because she was confident that she deserved more (and her scores in other sections were also much higher, Bands 8 – 7.5).

Later on she got really pessimistic, after talking to people who assured her that IELTS folks will never give her a higher score because of some kind of conspiracy, that by giving her a higher score, IELTS organization will admit to their guilt and they are never going to do that.

Two month later, a very happy A wrote me a letter about her score being raised from 6.5 to 7 and her money was refunded. Apparently the examiner in Cambridge disagreed with the local Romanian examiner and thought A was a Band 7 candidate.

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