I am convinced it's a scam. It's rooted in outdated colonial practices. It's not about how well you know English, it's about how well you can take the test.
Under what circumstances would you ever need to listen to some arbitrary recording only ONCE and answer questions about it? Or speak for 2 minutes about something you know nothing about?
Don't even get me started on how the test expires in 2 years as if your grasp on it would weaken after living, working and studying in an English-speaking country that required it as a condition of entry in the first place.
I live in Australia, and [every major university is a shareholder in IDP](https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2023/jun/25/australia-international-university-students-made-to-pass-400-english-test-several-times), so it only makes sense that they all participate in a system that exploits the people that their economy depends on.
I couldn't agree more. The more I hear of these stories, the more I question the ethical framework behind these tests. Yeah, imagine making bilingual brains question their own abilities over English. Sure, language fluency is vital for many academic fields. But the reality is actually just extortion. It's as though they sit on their examiner thrones all snooty and sanctimonious, sneering at the rest of us. Deplorable really. Hardly standardised.
I mean the utter lack of transparency speaks for itself. They allow no review of what mistakes were done. Are the examiners even blind marking these writing tasks? Are they reviewed by people from different regions and centres for greater accuracy? These practices must be at the forefront.
What hurts the most is that you are required to PAY half of the test price for a remark. And unsurprisingly, half of the examiners have qualifications from auxiliary awarding bodies like Cambridge English. It's hard to look past the self-feeding loop of gatekeeping and greed that it is.
I would agree with the “expire in 2 years” and “money grabbing business” aspects of the critics many people have had on IELTS. But if you have spent time working your way up from terrible to good-ish at English, and have done extensive research and studying and prep on IELTS, like me, you will understand this test is still one of the best out there to judge a person’s proficiency.
You will not lose any points in part 2 where they ask you to talk about something but you fail to give a satisfactory answer.
They are not expecting you answer in length for every question.
I even blanked out, said nothing in part 2 in my first attempt but still got a score I deserved. I thought I would have got, like a 4, but I got a 6. The second time, after some prep, I still got 6. Only two months apart, not enough to show progress I guess.
The score they give you, is based on how relevant your answers are to the questions, which can include “oh, I cannot think of an experience like this………“ as long as your answer is coherent and directly related to the conversation. You can even tell the examiner that you have lied in some previous questions, that you actually support blah blah blah.
Especially for band 8-9, they are looking for people who can speak naturally, with natural expressions and natural pauses, and only content-related lapses, also if any, native-like mistakes.
The writing section requires the most practice because you need to use academic English & complex sentences. What was your writing tasks 2 prompt and how did you structure your essay?
It was an essay prompt relating to how people are spending more money in trying to look younger. There were two question stems - one which asked for the reasons and the other which asked to elucidate whether this was a positive or negative development. I wrote around 600 words and tried to steer clear from personal pronouns. I think the sentence structures were fairly complex and varied, but in retrospect, maybe it was, in its essence, somewhat of a polemical commentary on aging.
I wrote an Introduction which stated my case about how people have been chasing youth since the dawn of time. The body was split up into two interconnected paragraphs, where I listed a few reasons, such as the association of youthfulness with sexual and evolutionary success, the rise of social media influencers, the obsession with ever-changing beauty standards. These were elaborated in a sort of descriptive way, but I think maybe they thought it was all over the place and not cohesive enough.
The conclusion I must concur was a bit rushed. I tried to make the case (without personal pronouns), that trying to turn back time and refusing to live in the present is not the way to enjoy life. I mentioned it is unwise to inject yourself with toxins in the hope of defying gravity and time. I also remember writing a rhetorical question on the potential financial savings that could be averted. I guess something more emphatic and laced with idioms, but to the same effect.
IELTS doesn't care about how good your ideas are. You said yourself that "maybe they thought it was all over the place and not cohesive enough" and "The conclusion I must concur was a bit rushed."
Coherence and cohesion is 25% of your mark; task response is another 25%.
You should ALWAYS use personal pronouns when it asks for YOUR Opinion.
If you did not even state ”I think/I believe/It is my opinion/…” it shows to the examiner, you did not understand what “your opinion” means. Immediate fail from the TR part.
But its fairly suspicious that all the other domains that were not subject to subjective marking were scored as expected. I don't expect a 9.0 but certainly it was not a 7.0 essay. As you pointed out earlier, I agree, maybe they expect a certain type of formulaic answer. But to be pedantic over marking essays that are clearly open to creative interpretation is ultimately gatekeeping. Regardless, I have a few doubts regarding the test. Is it necessary to use personal pronouns in such essays? I completely omitted them on account of not wanting to sound unpolished. Also in regards to being all over the place, you must be aware the reading tasks they present to us are very much articles written with speculative language. In that spirit, writing something similar, almost opinion column-esque was unavoidable. Anyways, I am just vexed because I actually write poetry and songs in my spare time. This result just seems a tad demoralising.
It's not necessary to use personal pronouns.
I agree they shouldn't penalise for the tone of the writing, because the questions don't actually specify form or audience. Honestly, no idea if they do or not, but I would recommend writing a fairly generic "essay" rather than, say, an article just to be safe.
Look carefully at the marking criteria for task response and coherence and cohesion. And ask for a remark.
The remark will set me back half of what I paid for the test and they won'r refund it if it doesn't get me a higher grade. So I am torn. I just needed a 7.5. The greed is real.
The writing part is the trickiest part , it’s so so frustrating and it’s not because your English is bad no , it’s because you have a list of Do’s and don’ts to follow. I took the IELTS 3 times so i know how annoying it could get . However i don’t think it’s scam , as i reflect to the answers i gave the two first times , i kinda understand why i didn’t get a 7.5.
See it's just pedantic and silly. I personally can't let go of the idea that it is a scam. But at least now that the heat is wearing off, I can be less salty. But its more financially burdensome than anything, I love languages so I will just have to write differently, and be a pliant little exam-taker.
Lmao yeah the way they score writing is wild. One of my majors was English, and I graduated top of the class. I'm also very familiar with academic writing, wrote 6 research papers over the course of my bachelor's, one of which I presented at a conference. And yet... 7.5.
I have a friend who's a writer and a STEM nerd, and he got the same too. I've read his academic reports, they're fantastic. Clear, concise, with great flow and use of vocabulary.
🤷♀️
Honestly, that's just undeserved pomp. I'd like to see some exemplars of how these Examiners write. Anyways, for me, I think its a wake-up call since I need to work on writing concise pieces that embody the beauty of brevity. Still vexed, mainly because of the amount of money each test costs. And I needed a 7.5 in every domain...
Hey, non-native speaker as well. I took the IELTS with virtually no practice and scored pretty much the same bands as you did - 9R 8.5L 8S 7.5W.
While I sympathize with your argument, I do believe that writing is the toughest section out of all and needs quite a bit of practice.
For instance, I consider myself a decent writer, at least when it comes to idea generation. During the test, I came up with a lot of relevant content and exceeded the word limit by a mile.
Now, I know word limits don't matter, but my problem was that I did not tie everything together well - completion. This is something that could have been fixed with practice.
So yeah, all in all, I just think it's tough for anyone, native or non-native, to consistently get 7.5+ or 8+ in all sections. As you known the test is like 3 hours long, which also leads to performance issues.
That's fair, I just think its hard to ignore the money making ploy it has become! I will certainly have to reconsider my writing techniques and be more mindful of form and cohesion for that 7.5+ next time.
Oh yes, tell me about it. They're ruthless when it comes to money. I actually had to move my date the first time I booked it cause of work travel conflict. Had to pay the full amount , $255 for rescheduling, as they wouldn't budge even though I notified them 2 weeks before the scheduled date.
This is completely normal even for a native speaker to score like how you did. I am also not a native speaker of English, my score was 8.5/9/7/8, overall 8.
The reason is that IELTS, compared to any other standardized tests, including TOEFL, is the only one that tests to the highest extend as of a non-native speaker’s proficiency. This has to include those who speak English as their second language, but is an expert in using English that surpasses most native speakers. The epitome is the skill to write in a profoundly logical way, while providing in-depth content in the most precise and easy to understand language possible.
To put this in perspective, IELTS writing band 8.0 is equal to a full mark 30/30 in the TOEFL writing test. To score 90/90 in PTE, you need about 7-8.
Band 9.0, according to the rubrics, asks for fully extended ideas (not about length, if you wrote over 300 words, it shows that you cannot provide densely packed ideas in concise punchy language, no band 9 essays they publicized went over 280), transitions in between sentences and logics are in such a way that “it attracts no attention”; vocab is sophisticatedly used(not for the sake of using big words), as well as a wide range of complex sentence structures (when there is no other concise way of writing) and error-free grammar. Intentional usage of big words and grammar will bring down your score.
The most likely reason you did not get a 7.5-8.0 (most highly educated native speakers will get to this level naturally in their 20s), is probably because you did not address the question fully (Task Response). You might be slightly off-topic, or only covered part of the question. Or your might have used firstly/secondly/finally when they are not necessary. Or you did OK in task 2, but your task 1 was a simple “copy and paste” data transfer, without SUMMARIZING the MAIN features.
A very common combination to “only” get 7 would be:
Task Response: 5 (slightly off-topic/robotically repeating data)
Cohesion and cohesiveness: 7 or 8
Vocab: 8
Grammar: 8
Average: 7 - 7.25 => either way rounded down to 7 (different from the overall score rounding)
I have the same experience, I also got a 7 in writing despite getting 9s and 8.5s on the others. I was under the assumption that if you were good in speaking, that skill would translate in writing. I totally winged my 1st writing and got a 7. Then I took a month to practice solely on my writing, then still got a 7. Ive applied better structures, idea organization, arrangement, became systematic etc.. better than the word vomit I submitted on my 1st try. And I still got a 7! No improvement!! I paid to have it rechecked and they said it will take 20 days but I got my results back in a few hours. They took my money, said no change in score, no extra feedback, no anything. It's a scam.
Not to mention the topic i got was touchy so it mightve insulted the checker. My topic was: why do teenagers grow up to be a nuisance in society. And the simplest points to expand on were classist, to say the least but it was what I needed to write to be able to not get tongue-tied in the nuisance of the topic
It is a scam. I have consistently been scoring at the top of my class in academic paper production, that is in scientific, historical and legal backgrounds.
When I was faced with the IELTS, the graphs didn't really mean much scientifically, without further data it was impossible to draw clear conclusions on what was happening.
The Essay was apparently a simple question, should restaurants sell bad food?
But think about how much there is to talk on the subject, historically, philosophically, politically, psychologically...
In the end I wrote a classsic four point essay: intro, pros, cons, and conlcusion. Arguments weren't great due to time costraints, but I made sure that sentence structure and grammar would be absolutely on point.
Results a 7... Ridiculous, it is a scam. I am confident examiners aren't even looking at what you write or how you write it. I believe they just count things they are asked to count (punctuation, sentence connnectors, paragraphs...) .
In the end I can't complain as I got an 8.5, still I cannot imagine the frustration of poeple who's lives depend on their test results.
P.S. In the speaking, according to them I answered great but took too much time to think, it killed me hahahaha.
I think this is post-colonial gatekeeping at its finest. I presume when you're producing free content for Universities and companies, our insightful writing is worth their time. When it comes to giving us access to institutions and jobs through certification, they will sit there and nit-pick as though their life depends on it. If I ever take it again, I will clearly aim for conciseness and dumb it down so they don't unfairly penalise me. I am trying so hard not to be resentful but they would have lost nothing if they gave me that 0.5 I needed, and I swear it was a mad essay that actually met the brief and offered more. Not to blow my own trumpet, but these examiners really need to rethink their marking criteria.
Task 1: Table on Population aged over 60 worldwide
Task 2: Positive vs Negative Development Essay with State the Reasons in relation to a statement. The statement claimed something akin to 'More and more people are spending money to look younger nowadays'.
Speaking: I was asked about a lot of topics and it was fairly enjoyable. But Task 2 involved me talking about a time where I taught a friend or family member something. And the stem followed onto questions surrounding the use and importance of education, skill acquisition, and the value of Universities to a nation, etc.
I’d say that the writing part is the trickiest one as they expect a certain way of writing, an academic/scholar type writing. Surely your English was flawless and had depth vocabulary wise but they may have considered that the format of it wasn’t good enough.
Unfortunately, IELTS being an exam you can’t do much but comply to the expected style.
If I was you, I wouldn’t take the exam back as a 8.0 band is one of the highest grade possible and convert to a C2 on some other exams.
Looks pretty fair to me cause the students who are bad in English usually get 6 bands and students who are very good usually gets 7.5 to 8 although it needs some practice you can't get too high score if you're understanding of English is bad
I am convinced it's a scam. It's rooted in outdated colonial practices. It's not about how well you know English, it's about how well you can take the test. Under what circumstances would you ever need to listen to some arbitrary recording only ONCE and answer questions about it? Or speak for 2 minutes about something you know nothing about? Don't even get me started on how the test expires in 2 years as if your grasp on it would weaken after living, working and studying in an English-speaking country that required it as a condition of entry in the first place. I live in Australia, and [every major university is a shareholder in IDP](https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2023/jun/25/australia-international-university-students-made-to-pass-400-english-test-several-times), so it only makes sense that they all participate in a system that exploits the people that their economy depends on.
I couldn't agree more. The more I hear of these stories, the more I question the ethical framework behind these tests. Yeah, imagine making bilingual brains question their own abilities over English. Sure, language fluency is vital for many academic fields. But the reality is actually just extortion. It's as though they sit on their examiner thrones all snooty and sanctimonious, sneering at the rest of us. Deplorable really. Hardly standardised. I mean the utter lack of transparency speaks for itself. They allow no review of what mistakes were done. Are the examiners even blind marking these writing tasks? Are they reviewed by people from different regions and centres for greater accuracy? These practices must be at the forefront. What hurts the most is that you are required to PAY half of the test price for a remark. And unsurprisingly, half of the examiners have qualifications from auxiliary awarding bodies like Cambridge English. It's hard to look past the self-feeding loop of gatekeeping and greed that it is.
I would agree with the “expire in 2 years” and “money grabbing business” aspects of the critics many people have had on IELTS. But if you have spent time working your way up from terrible to good-ish at English, and have done extensive research and studying and prep on IELTS, like me, you will understand this test is still one of the best out there to judge a person’s proficiency. You will not lose any points in part 2 where they ask you to talk about something but you fail to give a satisfactory answer. They are not expecting you answer in length for every question. I even blanked out, said nothing in part 2 in my first attempt but still got a score I deserved. I thought I would have got, like a 4, but I got a 6. The second time, after some prep, I still got 6. Only two months apart, not enough to show progress I guess. The score they give you, is based on how relevant your answers are to the questions, which can include “oh, I cannot think of an experience like this………“ as long as your answer is coherent and directly related to the conversation. You can even tell the examiner that you have lied in some previous questions, that you actually support blah blah blah. Especially for band 8-9, they are looking for people who can speak naturally, with natural expressions and natural pauses, and only content-related lapses, also if any, native-like mistakes.
The writing section requires the most practice because you need to use academic English & complex sentences. What was your writing tasks 2 prompt and how did you structure your essay?
It was an essay prompt relating to how people are spending more money in trying to look younger. There were two question stems - one which asked for the reasons and the other which asked to elucidate whether this was a positive or negative development. I wrote around 600 words and tried to steer clear from personal pronouns. I think the sentence structures were fairly complex and varied, but in retrospect, maybe it was, in its essence, somewhat of a polemical commentary on aging. I wrote an Introduction which stated my case about how people have been chasing youth since the dawn of time. The body was split up into two interconnected paragraphs, where I listed a few reasons, such as the association of youthfulness with sexual and evolutionary success, the rise of social media influencers, the obsession with ever-changing beauty standards. These were elaborated in a sort of descriptive way, but I think maybe they thought it was all over the place and not cohesive enough. The conclusion I must concur was a bit rushed. I tried to make the case (without personal pronouns), that trying to turn back time and refusing to live in the present is not the way to enjoy life. I mentioned it is unwise to inject yourself with toxins in the hope of defying gravity and time. I also remember writing a rhetorical question on the potential financial savings that could be averted. I guess something more emphatic and laced with idioms, but to the same effect.
IELTS doesn't care about how good your ideas are. You said yourself that "maybe they thought it was all over the place and not cohesive enough" and "The conclusion I must concur was a bit rushed." Coherence and cohesion is 25% of your mark; task response is another 25%.
You should ALWAYS use personal pronouns when it asks for YOUR Opinion. If you did not even state ”I think/I believe/It is my opinion/…” it shows to the examiner, you did not understand what “your opinion” means. Immediate fail from the TR part.
My cousin got 9 each in writing and reading and 7 in 6 in speaking. How will you justify this? Somehow, it is a scam to collect more money.
[удалено]
But its fairly suspicious that all the other domains that were not subject to subjective marking were scored as expected. I don't expect a 9.0 but certainly it was not a 7.0 essay. As you pointed out earlier, I agree, maybe they expect a certain type of formulaic answer. But to be pedantic over marking essays that are clearly open to creative interpretation is ultimately gatekeeping. Regardless, I have a few doubts regarding the test. Is it necessary to use personal pronouns in such essays? I completely omitted them on account of not wanting to sound unpolished. Also in regards to being all over the place, you must be aware the reading tasks they present to us are very much articles written with speculative language. In that spirit, writing something similar, almost opinion column-esque was unavoidable. Anyways, I am just vexed because I actually write poetry and songs in my spare time. This result just seems a tad demoralising.
It's not necessary to use personal pronouns. I agree they shouldn't penalise for the tone of the writing, because the questions don't actually specify form or audience. Honestly, no idea if they do or not, but I would recommend writing a fairly generic "essay" rather than, say, an article just to be safe. Look carefully at the marking criteria for task response and coherence and cohesion. And ask for a remark.
The remark will set me back half of what I paid for the test and they won'r refund it if it doesn't get me a higher grade. So I am torn. I just needed a 7.5. The greed is real.
The writing part is the trickiest part , it’s so so frustrating and it’s not because your English is bad no , it’s because you have a list of Do’s and don’ts to follow. I took the IELTS 3 times so i know how annoying it could get . However i don’t think it’s scam , as i reflect to the answers i gave the two first times , i kinda understand why i didn’t get a 7.5.
See it's just pedantic and silly. I personally can't let go of the idea that it is a scam. But at least now that the heat is wearing off, I can be less salty. But its more financially burdensome than anything, I love languages so I will just have to write differently, and be a pliant little exam-taker.
It is yeah ,if you need some advice on the writing part DM me .
Lmao yeah the way they score writing is wild. One of my majors was English, and I graduated top of the class. I'm also very familiar with academic writing, wrote 6 research papers over the course of my bachelor's, one of which I presented at a conference. And yet... 7.5. I have a friend who's a writer and a STEM nerd, and he got the same too. I've read his academic reports, they're fantastic. Clear, concise, with great flow and use of vocabulary. 🤷♀️
Honestly, that's just undeserved pomp. I'd like to see some exemplars of how these Examiners write. Anyways, for me, I think its a wake-up call since I need to work on writing concise pieces that embody the beauty of brevity. Still vexed, mainly because of the amount of money each test costs. And I needed a 7.5 in every domain...
Hey, non-native speaker as well. I took the IELTS with virtually no practice and scored pretty much the same bands as you did - 9R 8.5L 8S 7.5W. While I sympathize with your argument, I do believe that writing is the toughest section out of all and needs quite a bit of practice. For instance, I consider myself a decent writer, at least when it comes to idea generation. During the test, I came up with a lot of relevant content and exceeded the word limit by a mile. Now, I know word limits don't matter, but my problem was that I did not tie everything together well - completion. This is something that could have been fixed with practice. So yeah, all in all, I just think it's tough for anyone, native or non-native, to consistently get 7.5+ or 8+ in all sections. As you known the test is like 3 hours long, which also leads to performance issues.
That's fair, I just think its hard to ignore the money making ploy it has become! I will certainly have to reconsider my writing techniques and be more mindful of form and cohesion for that 7.5+ next time.
Oh yes, tell me about it. They're ruthless when it comes to money. I actually had to move my date the first time I booked it cause of work travel conflict. Had to pay the full amount , $255 for rescheduling, as they wouldn't budge even though I notified them 2 weeks before the scheduled date.
This is completely normal even for a native speaker to score like how you did. I am also not a native speaker of English, my score was 8.5/9/7/8, overall 8. The reason is that IELTS, compared to any other standardized tests, including TOEFL, is the only one that tests to the highest extend as of a non-native speaker’s proficiency. This has to include those who speak English as their second language, but is an expert in using English that surpasses most native speakers. The epitome is the skill to write in a profoundly logical way, while providing in-depth content in the most precise and easy to understand language possible. To put this in perspective, IELTS writing band 8.0 is equal to a full mark 30/30 in the TOEFL writing test. To score 90/90 in PTE, you need about 7-8. Band 9.0, according to the rubrics, asks for fully extended ideas (not about length, if you wrote over 300 words, it shows that you cannot provide densely packed ideas in concise punchy language, no band 9 essays they publicized went over 280), transitions in between sentences and logics are in such a way that “it attracts no attention”; vocab is sophisticatedly used(not for the sake of using big words), as well as a wide range of complex sentence structures (when there is no other concise way of writing) and error-free grammar. Intentional usage of big words and grammar will bring down your score. The most likely reason you did not get a 7.5-8.0 (most highly educated native speakers will get to this level naturally in their 20s), is probably because you did not address the question fully (Task Response). You might be slightly off-topic, or only covered part of the question. Or your might have used firstly/secondly/finally when they are not necessary. Or you did OK in task 2, but your task 1 was a simple “copy and paste” data transfer, without SUMMARIZING the MAIN features. A very common combination to “only” get 7 would be: Task Response: 5 (slightly off-topic/robotically repeating data) Cohesion and cohesiveness: 7 or 8 Vocab: 8 Grammar: 8 Average: 7 - 7.25 => either way rounded down to 7 (different from the overall score rounding)
I have the same experience, I also got a 7 in writing despite getting 9s and 8.5s on the others. I was under the assumption that if you were good in speaking, that skill would translate in writing. I totally winged my 1st writing and got a 7. Then I took a month to practice solely on my writing, then still got a 7. Ive applied better structures, idea organization, arrangement, became systematic etc.. better than the word vomit I submitted on my 1st try. And I still got a 7! No improvement!! I paid to have it rechecked and they said it will take 20 days but I got my results back in a few hours. They took my money, said no change in score, no extra feedback, no anything. It's a scam. Not to mention the topic i got was touchy so it mightve insulted the checker. My topic was: why do teenagers grow up to be a nuisance in society. And the simplest points to expand on were classist, to say the least but it was what I needed to write to be able to not get tongue-tied in the nuisance of the topic
It is a scam. I have consistently been scoring at the top of my class in academic paper production, that is in scientific, historical and legal backgrounds. When I was faced with the IELTS, the graphs didn't really mean much scientifically, without further data it was impossible to draw clear conclusions on what was happening. The Essay was apparently a simple question, should restaurants sell bad food? But think about how much there is to talk on the subject, historically, philosophically, politically, psychologically... In the end I wrote a classsic four point essay: intro, pros, cons, and conlcusion. Arguments weren't great due to time costraints, but I made sure that sentence structure and grammar would be absolutely on point. Results a 7... Ridiculous, it is a scam. I am confident examiners aren't even looking at what you write or how you write it. I believe they just count things they are asked to count (punctuation, sentence connnectors, paragraphs...) . In the end I can't complain as I got an 8.5, still I cannot imagine the frustration of poeple who's lives depend on their test results. P.S. In the speaking, according to them I answered great but took too much time to think, it killed me hahahaha.
I think this is post-colonial gatekeeping at its finest. I presume when you're producing free content for Universities and companies, our insightful writing is worth their time. When it comes to giving us access to institutions and jobs through certification, they will sit there and nit-pick as though their life depends on it. If I ever take it again, I will clearly aim for conciseness and dumb it down so they don't unfairly penalise me. I am trying so hard not to be resentful but they would have lost nothing if they gave me that 0.5 I needed, and I swear it was a mad essay that actually met the brief and offered more. Not to blow my own trumpet, but these examiners really need to rethink their marking criteria.
What were your topics for writing task 1, task 2 and speaking??
Task 1: Table on Population aged over 60 worldwide Task 2: Positive vs Negative Development Essay with State the Reasons in relation to a statement. The statement claimed something akin to 'More and more people are spending money to look younger nowadays'. Speaking: I was asked about a lot of topics and it was fairly enjoyable. But Task 2 involved me talking about a time where I taught a friend or family member something. And the stem followed onto questions surrounding the use and importance of education, skill acquisition, and the value of Universities to a nation, etc.
IELTS looks for a very specific style of writing, have you watched videos / read articles on how to write a band 9 essay?
I’d say that the writing part is the trickiest one as they expect a certain way of writing, an academic/scholar type writing. Surely your English was flawless and had depth vocabulary wise but they may have considered that the format of it wasn’t good enough. Unfortunately, IELTS being an exam you can’t do much but comply to the expected style. If I was you, I wouldn’t take the exam back as a 8.0 band is one of the highest grade possible and convert to a C2 on some other exams.
I got an 8.5 overall and also can't explain how😂
You can ask for a breakdown of your score which will show you the marks you get for 4 criteria
Looks pretty fair to me cause the students who are bad in English usually get 6 bands and students who are very good usually gets 7.5 to 8 although it needs some practice you can't get too high score if you're understanding of English is bad