Introducing BandCheck: an IELTS Writing grader that thinks like an examiner
If you've prepared anyone for IELTS Writing, you know the pain. A single Task 2 essay takes thirty minutes to grade well. You score it; the student rewrites it; you score the rewrite. By the time a student is ready for exam day, you've graded twenty versions of the same prompt.
BandCheck is the tool we wished we had. It grades a student's essay in under a minute, applying the same public IELTS Writing rubric an examiner uses. It returns a band score plus a per-criterion breakdown: Task Response, Coherence & Cohesion, Lexical Resource, Grammatical Range & Accuracy. The feedback quotes the essay directly so the student knows exactly what to fix.
How it works
You send the bot an essay (Task 1 or Task 2) and the prompt. The bot returns the band, the per-criterion paragraphs, and a short list of concrete improvements. Free for the first few checks. Paid checks are priced in Telegram Stars, the same in-app currency you already have if you use Telegram.
Who it's for
- Individual test-takers preparing on their own.
- Tutors with a handful of students.
- Schools with multiple teachers and a single budget.
For the latter two, we built a teacher tier: shared credit pool, roster, per-student progress charts, weekly digests. A teacher creates a team in the bot, students join with one tap on a link, and every essay they grade comes out of the team's pool, not the student's wallet. We'll dig into the schools side in a later post.
Why now
There's no shortage of IELTS apps. There aren't many serious ones. Most are gamified vocabulary drills with little to do with the Writing test. BandCheck is the opposite end of the spectrum: a focused tool that does one thing — grade your Writing essays — and does it the same way every time.
What's next
Over the coming weeks we'll publish breakdowns of common scoring mistakes, sample essays graded line-by-line, and the occasional product update. Every post links back to the bot so you can grade your own essay while the analysis is fresh.