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The International English Language Testing System, popularly called as IELTS is an internationally approved English language proficiency test. Most of the academic institutions, government institutions and organizations in Canada accept IELTS test report to assess candidate’s English language ability, which is an important element when you apply under Canada’s Federal Express Entry system.

What Is CLB?

Full form of CLB is Canadian Language Benchmarks. It is a measuring and recognition of English language proficiency of adult immigrants and prospective immigrants for living and working in Canada.  The government of Canada uses CLB to identify your mastery of the English language.

To apply for permanent residency through Express Entry, you need to have a minimum language proficiency of CLB 7, which is a minimum of 6.0 for each section of the IELTS. For each program, there are different language proficiency requirements.

The IELTS is one of the leading testing system and test candidates on the basis of 4 key areas, including:

• Listening: Containing 40 questions &30 minutes of completion time with added 10 minutes time for transference.
• Reading: Containing 40 questions with 60 minutes completion time.
• Writing: Containing 2 tasks &60 minutes of completion time.
• Speaking: Containing 3 parts &11 – 14 minutes of completion time.

As you can see, the IELTS band scores are from 0 to 9, while the CLB levels are from 1 to 12. Consequently, we need to refer to reliable sources to find their equivalency. I have used different sources to develop the following CLB/IELTS table. The first column shows the CLB level. Of course, the other four columns show the IELTS equivalency for each competency area.