One conversation that I have had a few times recently is whether it is worth getting a remark (officially called Enquiry on Results) of your IELTS test if you feel that you got a lower score than you deserved.
First of all, I should say that I don’t have any specific knowledge about this issue. I am only using my own judgement along with publicly available information from IDP and the British Council. Mistakes do happen sometimes and so there might be some occasions where applying for a remark could be worthwhile.
However, there are also a few questions that are probably worth asking yourself before deciding whether to apply for a remark.
Can I afford it?
The cost for a remark is 4,100 NTD with the IDP and 4,000 NTD with the British Council. The price is the same regardless of whether you have one component marked or you have all four components remarked. If your mark increases in any one of the components that have been remarked, then you will receive your money back 😊.
Which part of the test do I feel I underachieved in?
For the reading and listening tests, there are correct and incorrect answers, so the chances of a mistake being made in the marking are much smaller than for the writing and speaking tests, where there is some degree of subjectivity in how the marking criteria is applied. Therefore, if you are surprised by a low score in reading or listening, then it is much less likely that your score would increase as a result of a recheck. However, if you were surprised by a low score in writing or speaking, then it might be worth applying for a remark.
How much does my score need to improve by in order to achieve my target score?
If you need to improve your score by 0.5 of a band in one component to achieve your target score, then you have a much greater chance of success. For example, let’s imagine you need 6.5 overall and when you did the test you got:
R:7 L:6.5 W:5.5 S:5.5 = Overall 6.0
*See here for how to calculate IELTS scores.
In this example, increasing your score by 0.5 in just one component would increase your overall score to 6.5, so in this case it might be worth applying for a remark, especially if you feel your performed much better than your score suggests in either writing or speaking.
However, if you need to achieve a score of 6.5 overall and a minimum of 6 in each component, then you would obviously need to increase your score by 0.5 in both writing and speaking. In this case, obviously the chance of your score increasing enough to achieve your target score are much smaller.
Likewise, if your score needs to improve by a whole band in one component, the chance of your score increasing by one band are much smaller than 0.5 of a band.
Was my score much lower than previous tests that I have done?
If you have done the IELTS test previously and got a higher score in one component the first time you did the test, then this could be a sign that there was some mistake the second time round. For example, imagine you need to achieve a score of 7 overall and a minimum score of 6.5 in each component and the first time you did the test, you got the following score:
R:7.5 L:8 W:6 S:7 = Overall 7
Imagine you did the test a second time, and got the following score:
R:7.5 L:8 W:6.5 S:6 = Overall 7.5
In this situation, your score in speaking has dropped by a whole band from the first test to the second test, which is quite unusual. This could suggest that there may have been a mistake in the marking of the speaking component in the second test and it might be worth applying for a remark, especially as your speaking score would only need to increase by 0.5 of a band to achieve your target score. However, it’s also worth remembering that both speaking and writing both depend on your performance on the day of the test, so it is quite possible that a poorer performance in the second test will result in a slightly lower mark.
How long am I prepared to wait for the results of the remark?
According to the IDP website, ‘the process will take approximately 2 to 4 weeks.’ The British Council website states that ‘The remarking process takes 2-4 working weeks after submission of the re-marked form, excluding time for posting to UK.’
Did I make any mistakes in the test?
It is important that you be honest with yourself here. The most serious mistakes that you could make are probably in the writing component, such as not properly answering the question in part 2 or not having time to finish your answer. If you feel that you may have made these kinds of mistakes, it might be better to accept your result and try again.
Conclusion
Before finishing this blog post, there are a couple of further points I would like to make. First of all, we are all human, and just like you or I, everyone makes mistakes sometimes, and that includes examiners. So, if you do get a lower score then you expected, try to spend a bit of time to calmly reflect on the situation instead of getting angry and telling all your friends how unfair the IELTS examiner was to you. If a mistake was made, it will be a genuine mistake and it does not mean that the examiner is a bad person!
The second point is that if you are thinking about applying for a recheck, it probably means that you only just missed out on getting your target score. In the best possible situation, applying for a recheck might mean that you get your target score. However, that would mean that you only just managed to achieve the target score. These target scores have been set by universities as the absolute minimum possible score in order to be successful in your studies. However, do you really want to pay all that money to study abroad on a course where you have only just met the minimum score? Maybe it would be better to spend a little more time studying and making sure that your language level is as high as it possibly can be, so that you have the best possible chance of success when you go on to study in English.
Ask other people who have studied in English abroad and they will most likely tell you how difficult it was, how much they had to read on their course or how much time they spent writing assignments, etc. Studying for IELTS is a piece of cake compared to studying in English at university, so be kind to yourself and give yourself the best possible chance of making it easier for yourself once you got there.
More Useful Links to Read:
https://ieltscharlie.com/ielts-remark/
https://www.ieltsadvantage.com/2016/03/29/should-i-get-my-ielts-test-remarked/
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