Most candidates study for months without knowing how their score is actually calculated. This lesson installs the arithmetic: how four section bands become one overall band, where the rounding rules quietly give (or take) half a band, and why the cheapest half band on the entire test lives in Listening and Reading.
The overall band is an average with friendly rounding
Your overall band is the mean of your four section bands, rounded to the nearest half band. The rounding rule is the part almost nobody knows:
If the average ends in .25, it rounds UP to the next half band. If it ends in .75, it rounds UP to the next whole band.
That is not a typo — .25 and .75 both round up, never down.
Listening 6.5, Reading 6.5, Writing 6.0, Speaking 6.0 Average = 25 ÷ 4 = 6.25 → overall band 6.5
Listening 7.0, Reading 7.0, Writing 6.5, Speaking 6.5 Average = 27 ÷ 4 = 6.75 → overall band 7.0
Read those two examples again. In both cases, the candidate's overall band is higher than half of their section scores. This is why a targeted half-band gain in one section can move your whole certificate: the average only needs to cross a .25 or .75 threshold.
The strategic consequence: before you plan anything, compute the exact section combination you need. A candidate who needs overall 7.0 does not need four 7.0s — Listening 7.5, Reading 7.5, Speaking 6.5, Writing 6.5 averages 7.0 exactly. That is a completely different (and much easier) training plan than "get 7 in everything."
One warning: many universities and immigration programs set minimum section scores as well as an overall score (for example, "7.0 overall, no section below 6.5"). The rounding game only works within those floors. Check your target's real requirements — that is your drill at the end of this lesson.
Listening and Reading: raw score → band
Listening and Reading are marked by counting correct answers out of 40. No examiner, no judgment, no partial credit. The conversion varies slightly between test versions, but it stays close to this:
| Band | Listening (raw /40) | Academic Reading (raw /40) |
|---|---|---|
| 9.0 | 39–40 | 39–40 |
| 8.5 | 37–38 | 37–38 |
| 8.0 | 35–36 | 35–36 |
| 7.5 | 32–34 | 33–34 |
| 7.0 | 30–31 | 30–32 |
| 6.5 | 26–29 | 27–29 |
| 6.0 | 23–25 | 23–26 |
| 5.5 | 18–22 | 19–22 |
| 5.0 | 16–17 | 15–18 |
(Approximate. General Training Reading uses a harsher table — roughly 34/40 for a 7.0 — because its passages are easier.)
Look at the gaps. From 6.5 to 7.0 in Listening is often one to four extra correct answers. From 6.0 to 6.5 in Reading is sometimes a single question. Every question is worth exactly the same, whether it is an easy form-completion in Listening Part 1 or a brutal inference in Reading Passage 3.
Why Listening and Reading are the cheapest half band
Three reasons, and they stack:
1. Objective scoring. A correct answer is a correct answer. You do not need to change an examiner's perception of you — you need to tick one more box. There is no ceiling effect from "the examiner felt your range was limited."
2. Errors are mechanical, therefore trainable. Most lost Listening points are spelling slips, missed plural endings, or one moment of lost position in the audio. Most lost Reading points are location failures or paraphrase blindness. These are drills, not talent. The Listening and Reading modules of this course exist because these fixes are fast.
3. The gains compound through the rounding rule. Push Listening from 6.5 to 7.5 (that can be as little as six more correct answers) and your average jumps 0.25 — often enough to cross a rounding threshold on its own.
What moves Writing and Speaking bands
Writing and Speaking are scored by an examiner against four criteria, each worth 25%:
| Writing | Speaking |
|---|---|
| Task Response / Task Achievement | Fluency and Coherence |
| Coherence and Cohesion | Lexical Resource |
| Lexical Resource | Grammatical Range and Accuracy |
| Grammatical Range and Accuracy | Pronunciation |
Your section band is the average of the four criteria (rounded down to the nearest half). This means a beautiful vocabulary cannot rescue an essay that ignores half the question — the Task Response score drags the average down. Progress here is slower because you must change what an examiner perceives across four dimensions at once, and because feedback loops are longer (you cannot mark your own essay against an answer key).
The planning rule that falls out of all this: if your Listening or Reading is below your target, fix that first — it is faster, measurable after every practice test, and it buys rounding headroom for the sections that move slowly.
Your drill (10 minutes)
- Find your target's real requirement. Go to the official page of your university, employer, or visa program and write down two numbers: the overall band and any per-section minimums. Not what a forum said — the official page.
- Compute your cheapest winning combination. Using the averaging rule above, find the section mix that meets your target with the least total improvement. Bias the high scores toward Listening and Reading.
- Verify against reality. Sit Part 1 of Listening 2026-04 Test 1 (about 8 minutes) and mark it. Count raw correct answers and place yourself on the table above. That number is more honest than any self-assessment.
- Match the combination to a route. Take your target combination to the study plans and pick the plan built for your gap. The next lesson shows you how to measure that gap properly — with a full test under exam conditions.