How to get 9 in IELTS?

First of all, do you really need 9.0? I know plenty of native speakers who wouldn’t get it. What could you possibly need a 9.0 for?

There’s no real secret to the test – the Public Band Descriptors for speaking and writing are, as the name implies, public and freely available.

To get a 9.0 in the productive components, you must fulfill all positive aspects of the top band criteria in all the domains with no doubt. To achieve the maximum band in reading and listening, you need to answer all the questions correctly.

Watch out for the task achievement domain in the writing tasks – it’s quite possible to write extremely well but score a 5 or even a 4 in this area if you don’t answer the question properly. If you miss even one key detail, the examiner might give you a 6 in that domain.

If you’re highly skilled in English, you need to be careful to develop your answers in the speaking section – long pauses and gaps will kill your score for fluency and coherence. If the examiner says “I want you to talk about it for two minutes,” talk about it for two minutes. If the examiner has to step in and prompt you to speak more, kiss that 9.0 goodbye!

I can answer more specific questions, particularly if you give me examples to work from, but without that, any advice will effectively boil down to “be really good at English,” and “remember that even if you’re a highly competent English user, the examiner can only go on the evidence you have provided them.”