Grammar (Grammatical Range & Accuracy) for the IELTS Exam

Common failure modes

These are the patterns that cause most candidates to lose marks on this topic. Recognising them in advance is half the work.

• !Subject-verb agreement errors
• !Wrong tense (mixing past simple and present perfect)
• !Article misuse (a/an/the)
• !Run-on sentences without subordinate-clause punctuation

Study tips

• 1Drill the four conditional types daily.
• 2Practice three relative-clause sentences in every essay.
• 3Review tense use, especially the perfect tenses.
• 4Use a checklist: SVA, articles, tense, complex sentence count.

Sample IELTS Grammar (Grammatical Range & Accuracy) questions

These sample items mirror the format and difficulty of real IELTS questions. Practice with thousands more on the free Koydo question bank.

1. 1

   Which sentence is the strongest example of a Band 7+ complex structure?

   • AMany people use phones. They use them every day.
   • BPhones are used every day by many people.
   • CDespite the fact that phones offer convenience, many people, who use them daily, find them addictive.Correct
   • DPhones offer convenience and are addictive.
   Why this answer?

   The third option uses a subordinate clause ("Despite the fact that…"), a relative clause ("who use them daily"), and a main clause ("find them addictive"). This is exactly the kind of complexity that lifts Grammatical Range to Band 7+.