Band 7 grammar does not mean “no mistakes.” It means you use a range of sentence structures, and most of them are correct. Four structures give you almost all of that range. Learn one at a time and use it everywhere for a week.
1. Relative clauses — the easiest Band 7 move
Join two short sentences with which, who, or where: “I live in a quiet area. It is close to my work.” becomes “I live in a quiet area which is close to my work.” Examiners hear this as complex sentence control instantly.
2. Conditionals — talk about possibilities
- Real: “If I practise every day, my speaking will improve.”
- Unreal: “If I had more free time, I would read more.”
- Formal essay version: “If governments invested in public transport, traffic would fall.”
3. The passive — sound formal in Writing
“The graph shows that more cars were sold in 2020.” “It is widely believed that education should be free.” Task 1 charts and Task 2 arguments both need the passive — the doer is often unknown or unimportant.
4. A range of tenses — not just the present simple
Mix past (“I visited last year”), present perfect (“I have lived here since 2020”), and future forms (“I am planning to apply next year”) in the same answer. That range is exactly what the Band 7 descriptor describes.
The mistakes that hold learners at Band 6
Missing articles (“I am student”), third-person -s (“she go”), and run-on sentences joined only by commas cost more marks than any advanced structure earns. Read the full list: 10 grammar mistakes that keep you at Band 6 →
Your practice task: take any answer you wrote this week and rewrite three sentences: one with a relative clause, one conditional, one passive. That single exercise, repeated daily, is the fastest grammar upgrade there is.