This is a blunt thing to say, but if 5.5 or 6.5 feels hard and you are planning to study abroad, reconsider. Life here will be difficult.
The bands are not arbitrary numbers
IELTS does a genuinely good job of setting the papers and sorting people by level. Each band corresponds to something you can actually do.
5.5 is the level at which you can run your own life. Concretely:
- Read a letter from your bank.
- Read a letter from the council about your council tax.
- Write to appeal a parking fine.
It sounds small. It is precisely the set of things nobody will do for you.
And it needs to be 5.5 across the board
Any single skill below that and you will struggle. Not an average of 5.5. Each skill.
What I see here
There are people working ordinary jobs who need someone else's help for every piece of admin. For older people without the opportunity to study, fair enough. For younger people who moved here from Vietnam, it is a waste.
So start before you leave
Once you are here you will be busy. Eight hours a day is the low end, ten is normal. Add commuting, and the time difference if you are studying with someone at home.
Finding a teacher here is expensive. Finding one at Vietnamese rates means timetables that barely overlap.
So learn early, while you are still at home.
One very ordinary example
You park, you pay correctly, and the car park sends you a penalty notice anyway. You need to be able to ring up and contest it.
5.5 is the level that lets you do that. Below it, you are asking someone else for help, one errand at a time, for years.