Pronunciation mistakes that quietly cost you a band

IELTS does not reward a British or American accent. It rewards being easy to follow. A strong Indian, German, or Russian accent can sit at band 8 if every word is clear. The drops happen when the listener has to guess.

Word endings

Past tense -ed and plural -s carry meaning. If “I walk to work yesterday” and “I walked to work yesterday” sound identical, the examiner may hear a grammar error as well as a pronunciation one.

Stress on the wrong syllable

• phoTOgraph vs phoTOgrapher vs photoGRAPHic — the stress moves
• DEvelop vs deveLOPment
• CONtent (noun) vs conTENT (adjective)

Wrong stress is more damaging than a different vowel. Listeners use stress to find the word. Practise new academic words out loud before you use them in Part 3.

Sentence rhythm

English stresses the new information. If every syllable gets the same weight, the answer sounds flat and the examiner works harder. Stress the words that carry the point: “I moved there TWO years ago, not last month.”

How we mark it

Pronunciation is judged from the recording, not from spelling in the transcript. If no audio is captured we leave that criterion blank rather than guess. Use headphones and a quiet room so the sample is fair.