There’s no grammar section — so where do the marks go?
Open any IELTS test paper and you won’t find a grammar section. That misleads a lot of candidates into under-preparing it. In reality, grammar is scored continuously, inside the two productive papers:
- Writing — one of the four scoring criteria is Grammatical Range and Accuracy, worth 25% of your Writing band.
- Speaking — the same criterion, again worth 25% of your Speaking band.
- Reading and Listening — not scored for grammar, but powered by it: if parsing “Had the policy been implemented earlier…” takes you three seconds instead of half a second, you lose time on every long passage.
So a quarter of two entire papers rides on grammar, with no dedicated section to warn you. It’s the most under-drilled 25% in IELTS prep.
What examiners actually reward
The public band descriptors for Grammatical Range and Accuracy come down to two things:
- Range — you use a mix of simple and complex sentence forms: relative clauses, conditionals, passives, linked clauses. All simple sentences caps your score; so does attempting complex ones you can’t control.
- Accuracy — and this is where most candidates bleed marks. The descriptors draw a hard line between Band 6 and Band 7: at Band 6, errors persist (in Speaking, mistakes with complex structures may even be frequent, as long as they rarely block understanding). At Band 7, you must frequently produce error-free sentences. Not impressive sentences — error-free ones.
That line explains the most common IELTS plateau. Candidates stuck at 6.0–6.5 usually don’t lack grammar knowledge — they know the third conditional, they’ve studied articles. What they produce under pressure is another matter: the same handful of small errors, appearing in sentence after sentence, mathematically preventing “frequent error-free sentences” from ever happening.
These are fossilized errors — mistakes you’d catch instantly in someone else’s writing but repeat in your own, because the wrong form is what comes out when you’re thinking about ideas instead of grammar. We’ve written more about the mechanism in why you know the rules but still make the mistakes. The exam-facing consequence is simple: find your 3–4 recurring errors and drill them until the correct form is automatic — because in a 2-minute Speaking turn or a 40-minute essay, there is no time to apply rules consciously.
The errors that actually cost bands
Examiner reports and teacher experience keep pointing at the same short list. These are high-frequency precisely because they’re small — easy to know, hard to automate:
| Error type | Typical exam slip | Should be |
|---|---|---|
| Articles | Number of tourists increased | The number of tourists increased |
| Prepositions | It depends of the government | It depends on the government |
| Subject–verb agreement | The number of cars are rising | The number of cars is rising |
| Tense consistency | Last year I go to my hometown | Last year I went to my hometown |
| Uncountable nouns | many informations, advices | much information, advice |
| Say vs tell (Speaking Parts 2–3) | She said me that… | She told me that… |
Notice what’s not on the list: exotic structures. Nobody loses Band 7 for avoiding the subjunctive. They lose it because “informations” appeared four times in one essay.
Quick self-test: 10 IELTS-flavoured questions
Every prompt below is the kind of sentence you’d actually produce in Writing Task 1/2 or Speaking. If you hesitate — or get one wrong that you “knew” — you’ve just found a drill target.
How to use Engsy for IELTS prep
Engsy is a free app for iPhone, iPad and Android built for exactly this job: short multiple-choice drills with instant feedback and an explanation on every answer, so a known rule becomes an automatic one. For IELTS, use it like this:
- Diagnose first. Take the quiz above, reread a corrected essay, or record a 2-minute Speaking answer and listen back. Write down your 3–4 recurring errors — most candidates find them embarrassingly fast.
- Pick the matching decks. The overlap with the IELTS error list is direct: In / On / At prepositions, uncountable nouns, Say vs Tell, tenses — plus 60+ other drills if your weak spots are elsewhere.
- Study mode to relearn, Timer mode to survive pressure. Study mode re-teaches the rule with feedback on every answer. Then Timer mode adds a countdown — which is precisely the condition Speaking puts you in. If you can only produce “depends on” when you have five seconds to think, you don’t own it yet.
- Slot it into your revision schedule. Drills take a few minutes, so they fit the gaps between mock tests and vocabulary work — the commute, the queue, the ten minutes before bed. Accuracy work compounds fastest when it’s daily and small.
Honest scope note: Engsy drills accuracy — the repeated-error side of Grammatical Range and Accuracy. It is a complement to full IELTS mock tests, model essays and speaking practice, not a replacement for them. Do your mocks; use Engsy to fix what the mocks keep exposing.
Also preparing for TOEFL or Cambridge exams?
The same logic transfers:
- TOEFL iBT — like IELTS, the modern TOEFL has no discrete grammar section, but the Speaking and Writing rubrics score grammatical accuracy and range directly. The same fossilized errors cost the same points.
- Cambridge B2 First / C1 Advanced — these do test grammar head-on, in the Use of English tasks (key word transformations, open cloze). Prepositions, articles and verb patterns are exactly what those tasks probe, so the same drills apply even more literally.
Quick answers
Does IELTS have a grammar section?
No. Grammar is scored inside Writing and Speaking via the Grammatical Range and Accuracy criterion — 25% of each of those band scores — and it indirectly drives Reading and Listening speed. There is no separate grammar paper to “pass”, which is why it’s easy to under-prepare.
What grammar mistakes lower your IELTS band?
Small, repeated ones: articles, in/on/at prepositions, subject–verb agreement (“the number of… are”), tense shifts mid-answer, uncountable nouns (“informations”, “advices”), and say/tell confusion in Speaking. Persistent errors like these are what keep candidates at Band 6, because Band 7 requires frequently producing error-free sentences.
How do I improve Grammatical Range and Accuracy?
Work both halves. Range: deliberately practise complex forms you can control — relative clauses, conditionals, passives. Accuracy: diagnose your personal 3–4 recurring errors from corrected work, then drill those exact patterns — first untimed, then against a clock — until the correct form is what comes out by default. Automaticity, not knowledge, is what survives exam pressure.
Can an app replace an IELTS course or mock tests?
No, and be suspicious of any app that claims otherwise. Mock tests teach you the format, timing and task types; feedback from a teacher catches errors you can’t see. A drill app’s job is narrower and very effective: taking the errors your mocks keep exposing and making them stop happening.