How to Prepare for the Duolingo English Test

9 min readJan 9, 2023

With the Duolingo English Test gaining attraction among international students, a lot more people are looking for ways to improve their scores on this test. That’s why I will be writing this post to help you prepare for the Duolingo English Test the correct way.

Gather practice material to prepare for the Duolingo English Test

DET Success: In order to practice for the Duolingo English Test, you have to find good practice material that can boost your score higher. In your first step to a higher score, download the DET Success app, which is one of the few apps available on android and ios to practice for this test. You can get the app here:

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.DET.English.Test.Success

https://apps.apple.com/us/app/det-success-practice-for-test/id6444839498

Teacher Luke: Learning answering strategies and getting practice tests is what Luke can give you. He is the absolute king on YouTube when it comes to the Duolingo English Test. Even one time, he had a member of the Duolingo English Test team for an interview where they talked about exam requirements and preparation. When you are looking to learn about any question type, make him your go-to place.

Top Duolingo English Test courses on Udemy:

· Read and Select Questions Practice — Duolingo English Test: this is a practice test for the Read and Select question type, it has 360 questions, divided into 3 levels, and each level has 120 questions.

· Duolingo English Test Success — Complete Course for 120+

· Duolingo English Test: Write About The Topic

· Duolingo English Test: Describe the Photo

General Tips to prepare for Duolingo English Test

Increase your writing Speed: This is very important for the Duolingo English Test because of the limited time available to answer any question. For some questions like Write About a Photo which had 1 minute to answer the question. The time is just too short, and you have to be a fast writer to write more than two sentences because a high score will not come from writing two sentences. I connected a Bluetooth keyboard to my phone and practiced writing descriptions on DET Success app, which paid off. After some time, I managed to write almost 4–5 sentences describing an image in under one minute. This fast-writing speed helped with all writing questions, and I could focus on the actual answer rather than the letter location on the keyboard.

Use a variety of sentence structures: Don’t use just simple sentences; you should be able to use compound and complex sentences fluently and effectively while answering any question in the DET test.

Don’t drift from the topic: You should always stay on topic in all questions because it is one of the grading criteria in the Duolingo English Test.

Use various vocabulary: When answering any question type, you should always consider what you have written, consider repetitive words, look for synonyms, and use them instead. Secondly, while preparing for the test, always forget about using “very, much, really” and find better alternatives that convey the meaning than these common words. For example, instead of saying “very nice” you can say “beautiful” or instead of saying “I was really surprised” you can say “I was astonished” and so on.

Use complex vocabulary: The more advanced your vocabulary, the higher your score will be. Imagine two students answering the same question, one is speaking using academic wording, and the second is speaking using basic vocabulary; who will get the highest score? Clearly, the one who knows academic wording will get a higher score. One strategy to go through this is to memorize like 100–200 advanced vocabulary words and start using them in your answers. This way, you are using vocabs that other test takers do not usually use, and in turn, you guarantee yourself a higher score.

Answering Writing Questions Strategies

While writing, don’t use contractions: Remember that the Duolingo English Test is an academic English proficiency test, so using contractions like “I’m, he’s, they’re” are a bad habit, and you should use the full wording “He is, I am, They are” when answering writing questions in the test.

Punctuation marks: Although this tip seems a basic one, you can’t imagine how many people forget about punctuation or make mistakes while writing. So, be careful and learn about them and place them correctly.

Keep writing until the timer finish: Don’t you dare press next on writing questions hhhh and you should use all the time to write, edit, proofread, and enhance your answers.

In all speaking questions, although you are required to speak for at least 30 seconds. However, don’t stop there and continue speaking as much as you can.

Specific Question Types Answering Strategies

Read and Complete:

· Look out for keywords to understand the topic and make sense of what you are reading.

· Look closely at available verbs and which tense has been used inside the text because if any verb is a missing word, chances are you are going to use it with the same tense as the other.

· Start by filling in the obvious words that you will know from the first read of the passage.

· Look for the missing words in the passage, sometimes missing words are repeated in the passage, and you get one free word from the Duolingo English Test.

· If you do not know one missing word, don’t panic, just keep calm and work slowly from the words you do know until you reach the words you do not know.

Read and Select:

· Trust yourself and your English knowledge, and only choose the words that you know, not the words that you suspect are English words.

· Memorize any new vocabulary that you come across.

· Learn English prefixes and suffixes in English and watch out for them.

· Watch out for misspelled words.

Listen and Select:

· With unlimited listening times in this question type, listen to a word at least three times before making your decision about whether it’s an English word or not.

· Watch out for tricky words that the test had changed 1 syllable only of the word, so be careful, and always listen to all syllables in a word before choosing.

· Trust yourself, and only choose the words that you know.

Listen and Type:

· In the real test, some of the sentences are very long, so practice transcribing long sentences and don’t give yourself only 3 times. DET Success is a great resource for practicing long sentences and preparing for the test correctly.

· Write everything that you heard on the first try. Even if you forgot a few words, just write what you remember.

· How to deal with unknown words: When you face an unknown word, and you can’t spell it correctly, just pass it, and if the sentence loses its meaning, try to add any word that you know to complete the meaning.

· Write exactly as you hear. If you hear contractions like he’s or I’m, you should write them like this; if you hear he is or I am, then you write them like that, be precise in your writing.

· Use the second and third try to fill in the missing details that you didn’t get from the first listen to the audio.

· Don’t forget about capitalization and punctuation while typing your answer.

Read Aloud:

· Keep handling the situation: in this question type in the Duolingo English Test, and under pressure, a lot of students make the mistake of adding words. So, be careful and only speak what you see in front of you.

· Do NOT leave words out. Even if you don’t know those words, pronounce them in any way possible. It’s a big mistake to omit any word out.

· One of my personal mistakes in this question type is that I was sometimes changing a word with its synonym while speaking. I don’t know where that word came from, but what I figured out is if the word was placed in an uncommon context, my mind looks to switch it to a common word. So, be careful of this one and keep focus while speaking your answer.

· Try to speak confidently and talk as if you already know all the words in the sentence, don’t allow the test to sense that you are now comfortable with what you are saying.

· Use punctuation marks as breathing points while speaking.

How to answer photo questions: This answering strategy will bring you more than four sentences in write about a photo, and up to 80 seconds in speak about a photo.

· Always use descriptive language emphasizing the use of adjectives and adverbs.

· Start your answer by saying, “This image shows” or “This image depicts” or “I can see”.

· Then, describe the image’s main subject using descriptive language, adjectives, and adverbs.

· After that, move forward to describing the background and the foreground, describing what the main subject is doing.

· After that, look at your timer; if you still have time, then you should make a prediction of what has happened or what will happen.

Write About a Photo:

· Always try to describe the photo as if you are describing it to a person who does not see it.

· It’s not important to write an interesting description; the important is to write a true, accurate, and mistake-free answer.

· Leave 10 seconds before the timer finishes to proofread your answer.

Speak About a Photo

· Use the preparation time to plan out your answer. Think about where you will start and how are you going to move and where you will end up and how are you going to finish your answer.

· Try to be creative in your description to spend more time of the given 1:30 minutes.

· Practice describing the photo as we discussed in step number 6.

· Spend as much time as you can describing the main subject, the foreground, and the background.

Read then Write:

· Always write a conclusion: You would say why? Well, it’s a free sentence. It will not cost you thinking energy but only writing energy because it’s just a summary of the question, and if you are a fast writer, you can get it in 10 seconds.

Read then Speak:

· Each question is divided into sub-questions. Note that all of the questions are at the same importance level, and you have to include an answer for each one of them.

· You should answer each sub-question with at least two or three sentences, don’t use one sentence answer for a sub-question because you will end up finishing your answer even before the 30 seconds mark.

· Follow a structure while answering this question, starting with an introduction, then 1 or two supporting ideas, and then closing off with a conclusion.

· Make your answer well-connected and coherent using transition words; you can also use words like “moving on to the next question”.

· If you forgot to add something and you would like to add it, you can say “One more thing I’d like to talk about”.

· To finish your answer, you can use something like “In conclusion” or “All in all”.

Listen then Speak:

· Oftentimes, while answering Listen then Speak questions, because the question was not in front of me, I used to forget the question and continue speaking out of topic. I solved this by keeping focus, listening to the question 3 times, and during the preparation time, I didn’t just listen to the question; I tried to memorize it.

· If you drift off topic, you can go back by using something like “So anyways” or “As I was saying”.

· This question type follows the same answering structure as the previous question, with an introduction, supporting sentences, and a conclusion.

· While answering, add as much details as possible as long as they are relevant to the question. These details are your only way to reach 70–85 seconds of speaking.

Tips for the Duolingo English Test

Avoid using “Something” or “Thing” or other words of the same type, and always find the correct vocabulary that describes the item that you are talking about.
Don’t be afraid of the Duolingo English Test, and be relaxed while taking the test. If you are taking it, that means the university you are applying to accepts this test, which costs 49$, so if you are not fully satisfied with your result, you can take it four times before it reaches the price of the TOEFL or IELTS test. On the other hand, taking the other two tests will cost you more than 800$ to take one of them four times. So you are safe and sound, take the test a few times if you are unhappy with the score.
I finally got 150 on the real test, but I had to take it twice because the first one was not certified, and I could not understand the exact reason from the Duolingo English Test team.

Warnings About the Duolingo English Test

While taking the test, if any sound came inside the room, or somebody knocked on your door or you looked outside of the screen while taking the test, your score won’t be certified.
Be careful not to press any Windows or Macbook shortcuts while taking the test, especially if this shortcut causes the test window to minimize. It will cause the Duolingo English Test team not to certify your score.