The 3 Grammar Mistakes Keeping You at Band 6 (And How to Fix Them Fast)

Your fluency sounds smooth. Your pronunciation is clear. Yet your IELTS Speaking score is stuck at Band 6, and you cannot figure out why.

The answer is almost certainly hiding in your grammar — specifically in a pattern so automatic that you do not even notice you are doing it. I recently analysed a real Band 6 response from one of our SpeakPrac members, and within the first two sentences she committed the exact error that tells an examiner immediately: this speaker is not at Band 7 yet. By the end of this guide, you will know what that error is, why it matters so much, and the three focused changes that can push you from Band 6 to Band 8 in just a few weeks.

The Real Reason Band 6 Speakers Get Stuck

Let me show you the response I analysed. The question was a classic Part 1 opener:

“What are the most popular activities in your hometown?”

Here is what Dechen, a paid SpeakPrac Pro member targeting Band 8, said:

“The most popular activities in my hometown is farming because majority of the people living in the community they are farmers and they work throughout the year in every season and one of the other activities would be weaving. The housewife or the females they weave their own clothes so these two would be the most popular activities in my hometown.”

If you read that quickly it sounds almost fine. That is precisely the problem. The errors are subtle — but they are frequent, and frequency is everything when examiners apply the Band 7 descriptor, which requires “error-free sentences that are frequent.”

Let’s break down each issue and fix it.

Mistake 1: The Double Subject Error

This is the single most damaging grammatical pattern I see from Band 6 speakers, and Dechen commits it twice in one answer.

What it looks like:

• “…the people living in the community they are farmers”
• “The housewife or the females they weave their own clothes”

In both cases, she introduces a subject (the people / the females) and then immediately adds a pronoun (they) that refers to the same subject. In standard English grammar, one clause can only have one subject. When you add a redundant pronoun, you are essentially saying the subject twice — and it signals to the examiner that your grammar system is not yet operating at Band 7.

The clean fix:

Instead of: “majority of the people living in the community they are farmers”

Say: “the majority of people are farmers” — or go further with: “most people here work as farmers all year round.”

Notice I also added the before majority. This is a common omission. The correct phrase is always the majority of, never majority of alone.

Why this matters so much: This error is not just technically wrong — it sounds unnatural to native English ears. Examiners are listening for naturalness as much as accuracy.

Mistake 2: Weak and Repetitive Vocabulary

Moving beyond grammar, this is where Dechen loses a significant number of marks on Lexical Resource, the official IELTS criterion for vocabulary quality.

Look at these patterns in her response:

• She uses “most popular activities” at the start and again at the end — that is direct repetition with no paraphrasing.
• She says “one of the other activities would be weaving” — a wordy, indirect phrasing where “another common activity is weaving” would be sharper and more natural.
• She uses “housewife or the females” — both vague and slightly awkward. The cleaner option is “local women” or “women in the community.”
• She says “weaving” but stops there. A Band 8 speaker would say “handloom weaving” or “traditional textile weaving” — phrases that show genuine topic knowledge.

The rule of thumb: For every basic word you use, ask yourself: is there a more specific or less common alternative that still sounds natural? That precision is exactly what separates Band 6 vocabulary from Band 8 vocabulary.

Mistake 3: Over-answering Part 1

Dechen’s answer is quite long for a Part 1 response. This hurts her in two ways.

First, the more you speak, the more chances you have to make errors — and her answer does contain repeated errors precisely because she keeps going.

Second, Part 1 is designed for short, direct responses. The examiner is testing whether you can answer naturally, not whether you can deliver a speech. Aim for two to three well-constructed sentences, then stop.

Compare Dechen’s answer to a Band 9 model response:

“The most popular activity in my hometown is definitely agriculture, because most residents are farmers who cultivate crops all year round. Another popular activity is traditional textile weaving, as many local women practice this craft to create handmade clothing. These two activities are certainly the backbone of our local economy and identity.”

Three sentences. Complex grammar structures including relative clauses. Precise vocabulary: agriculture, residents, cultivate, textile weaving, backbone. That is all you need for Part 1.

What the SpeakPrac App Flagged

When Dechen ran her response through the SpeakPrac app, it identified the same errors and generated a corrected transcript. It transformed:

“majority of the people living in the community they are farmers”

into:

“most people are farmers working all year round”

That revision does three things at once: it fixes the grammar error, removes the redundancy, and makes the rhythm more natural. This kind of instant, targeted feedback is exactly what you need when you are on a tight timeline — Dechen has under five weeks to move from Band 6 to Band 8.

Your Band 6-to-8 Action Plan

To summarise, here are the three specific things to work on:

1. Eliminate the double subject error. Every time you start a clause with a noun phrase (the people, the students, the women), do not follow it with they or he or she. Pick one or the other.

2. Keep Part 1 answers to two or three sentences. Shorter, cleaner answers with fewer errors will score higher than long answers riddled with mistakes. Save the extended development for Part 2 and Part 3.

3. Upgrade your topic vocabulary. For the topics that are relevant to your life — your job, your hometown, your hobbies — learn the more precise, less common vocabulary. Words like cultivate, textile, artisan, infrastructure, and backbone will lift your Lexical Resource score noticeably.

The Bottom Line

Dechen’s fluency and pronunciation are already at a solid level. The gap between her current Band 6 and her target Band 8 is not about speaking more or speaking faster — it is about speaking more accurately and more precisely. Fix the double subject error, tighten your vocabulary, and stop over-answering Part 1. Those three changes alone can move your score significantly.

If you want to practise this the way Dechen is doing it, download the SpeakPrac app to record your answers, get your errors identified automatically, and hear a model response for every question you attempt. Because knowing what to fix is only half the battle — the other half is drilling it until it becomes automatic.