British or American spelling in IELTS: what is accepted

The short answer is that IELTS does not mind which system you use. It minds whether each word is spelled correctly, and in Writing whether your spelling is under control. This guide sets out what the official sources say, then the word pairs that cause most slips, and how to handle spelling in Listening, Reading and Writing.

What the official sources say

The official IELTS General Training FAQ, published on Cambridge English’s site with the IELTS.org name on every page, answers the question directly for Listening: “Both UK and US spellings are accepted.” The same FAQ says IELTS covers all major varieties of English, naming American, Australian and British, and that the recordings use a range of native-speaker accents, including Australian, British, New Zealand and North American. The Listening section is the same in Academic and General Training, so the rule applies to both.

IDP, one of the IELTS partners, says the same for the test as a whole. Its spelling guide answers “Can I use British or American spelling?” with yes, “as long as you spell the words correctly and stick to one or the other”. Its guide to British and American English says both forms of vocabulary, spelling and grammar are accepted.

What the sources do not publish is a list of accepted alternatives for every word, or a penalty for switching systems. The rest of this guide is the practical side: knowing the pairs, and keeping to one side of them.

What actually costs marks

In Listening, the official FAQ says you lose marks for incorrect spelling and grammar, and that the words you have to write are usually common words. IDP says a word with a spelling error in Reading or Listening is marked incorrect, with “libary” for “library” as its example: you heard the word, but you could not write it. There is no partial mark.

In Reading, the words you need are on the page, so the official FAQ’s advice is to copy them accurately. A word copied from the passage cannot be in the wrong system, because it is the passage’s own spelling.

In Writing, spelling is not a separate mark. It sits inside Lexical Resource. The site’s paraphrase of the public descriptors, in the Writing band descriptors explorer, describes a scale rather than a count: at the lower bands spelling and word-form errors are frequent enough to make a reader work, around band 6 they are present but do not get in the way, by band 7 they are occasional, and at band 8 they are rare. IELTS publishes no number of errors allowed at any band, and nothing here promises a band.

The pairs that cause most slips

These are the regular patterns. Each column is correct; the mistake is a word that belongs to neither, or a mix within one script.

Two pairs need extra care, because British English uses both forms with different jobs:

• practice and practise. In British English, “practice” is the noun and “practise” is the verb: “a practice test”, “practise every day”. American English uses “practice” for both.
• licence and license. In British English, “licence” is the noun and “license” is the verb. American English uses “license” for both.

If you choose British spelling, these are the pairs to learn as pairs. If you choose American spelling, one form covers both jobs.

A note on computers: if you practise on a laptop or phone set to US English, its spellchecker will underline British forms as errors, and the reverse is true too. IDP makes this point about “practise” and “licence”. Set your device to the system you have chosen, so your practice reinforces it.

Words, not just spellings

British and American English also use different words for the same thing: “flat” and “apartment”, “lift” and “elevator”, “timetable” and “schedule”, “autumn” and “fall”. IDP says both are accepted. In Listening, write the word the speaker uses, because the answer is the word on the recording, spelled correctly. In Writing, either is fine, and the same advice applies: stay in one variety where you can.

Listening: write what you hear, spelled correctly

Listening is where spelling costs the most, because every answer is a single word or a short phrase marked right or wrong. The official FAQ says the words you have to write are usually common words, and that names of people, places and companies may be spelled out on the recording. The guide to form, note and table completion covers names spelled letter by letter.

Three habits help:

1. Learn the common words both ways. Accommodation, address, library, government, environment, receipt and Wednesday are the kind of everyday words that appear in gaps and are easy to misspell.
2. Practise letter names in both accents. The letter Z is “zed” in British English and “zee” in American English, and the recordings use a range of accents. A practice test with a speaker from another region is the best training.
3. Check every answer at the end. On computer, the guide to common Listening mistakes and traps explains the checking time and what to look for.

Writing: keep one system from the first line

In Writing, a single misspelled word rarely matters on its own, but a script full of slips, or one that changes system halfway through, reads as less controlled. Decide before the test which system you will use. If you learnt English from American sources, use American spelling; if from British sources, use British. There is no advantage in either.

Then check on purpose in the last minutes:

1. Read once for spelling only, not for ideas.
2. Look at the words with “-our”, “-re”, “-ise” and doubled “l”. Are they all from the same system?
3. Look at the words you used most often in the essay. A repeated misspelling repeats the error.
4. Check the words copied from the question. They are given, so a misspelling there is a pure loss.

The guide to common Writing mistakes shows where spelling sits among other faults, and the guide to punctuation for IELTS Writing covers the other half of accuracy that a final check can fix.

How to practise

Keep a short list of the words you misspell, in your chosen system, and test yourself on it before each practice test. When you mark a Listening practice test, separate the answers you did not hear from the answers you heard but misspelled: the second group is the cheapest to fix. In Writing, ask whoever marks your essays to circle spelling separately, so you can see whether the errors are slips or a pattern.