The Same Voice, Different Scores: An Autoethnography of Mood, Examiners, and Real-Time Performance in IELTS Speaking and Listening

Abstract

The research examines why the IELTS Speaking and Listening scores of a single candidate differed when he took the tests in 2021 and 2025, even though his English proficiency did not change. The author is an English lecturer in Indonesia with bipolar disorder. The research adopts the methodology and stance of autoethnography and is based on six full IELTS exams and one single-skill Listening retake, supplemented by the autobiographical memory of the day the test was taken and the artifacts of the preparation prepared by the author. It reduces to speaking and listening, since the two skills are practiced on the spot and are time-constrained, where immediate focus and impact are most strongly exerted on performance. The results show that speaking and listening were between band 6 and 7.5, and between 6 and 8, and in most instances, just months apart. It is most easily isolated when listening, with no examiner to be taken into account, and with the same skill obtaining 6 at the close of a long testing day and 8 two weeks later when alone. The human element is added through speaking, as the oral interview is co-constructed with an examiner. The author had thought he was rated more severely by non-native examiners, but his self-ratings do not bear this out, which he reads as internalized native-speakerism that turned self-fulfilling on bad-mood days. The research concludes that single-sitting Speaking and Listening bands can indicate the condition and state of a test day as much as ability with implications of test fairness, preparation, and teacher consciousness when candidates have a mood disorder.