Band 5.5 cheat sheet

Overall

Target 5.5. The weakest section anchors the result — three strong sections do not cancel one weak one. Find the weak one, then give it the hours.

Writing Task 2 — the usual bottleneck

Target 5.0-5.5. The examiner asks four questions, in this order:

1. Does it answer the actual question — every part of it?
2. Is there a discernible order — one idea per paragraph?
3. Is each idea developed — explanation or example, not just asserted?
4. Can it be read without the examiner guessing what you meant?

Structure that works for any Task 2 question: restate the question in your own words as the opening · one main idea with a reason or example · a second idea with a reason or example · a closing sentence that restates your position, not a summary of the body. Four paragraphs, roughly 250 words. Do not memorise an essay; memorise this shape.

Writing Task 1 — data, not opinion

Target 5.0-5.5. Four types: line or bar, pie, table, process. The rules that matter:

• Describe, do not argue. No opinions, no predictions, no causes.
• Impersonal language: "the figure shows", "sales rose", "it can be seen that".
• Group data before you describe it. Four individual numbers read as noise; the same four numbers grouped into two trends read as an answer.
• Compare. "A rose while B fell" says more than listing them separately.
• Tense: past for completed data, present for general patterns. Pick one per task and hold it.

Speaking

Target 5.0-5.5. Keep talking. Three parts: introduction and interview (2-3 min), long turn (1 min with one minute to prepare), two-way discussion (3-4 min).

Fluency outranks grammar. A complete answer with grammatical slips scores above a short, correct one. Extend with reasoning rather than examples every time: "…and I think that is mainly because…" buys you another fifteen seconds of speaking time without needing new vocabulary.

Reading

60 minutes, three passages. The binding constraint is throughput, not comprehension.

Question types, in order of difficulty: True / False / Not Given (the trap — "not given" means the text is silent, which is different from "false") · Matching information · Heading matching · Summary completion · Multiple choice.

20 minutes per passage. Spend the leftover 60 seconds on the hardest question, not on re-reading everything.

Listening

30 minutes, one pass only. There is no second hearing — this is where the marks leak.

Read the questions and options before the recording starts. Know what you are listening for. Two recurring losses: spelling of names and numbers, and the /θ/ /ð/ /f/ /v/ / /l/ /r/ family, which non-native speakers routinely interchange.

Error log — the actual study method

Twenty minutes a day, every day, reviewing what you got wrong. This is where the hours actually pay off, and it is the part almost everyone skips.

Three columns: what the question tested · why the answer was wrong · the rule you will apply next time. The third column is the only one that matters. Twenty errors written properly beat two hundred skipped.