All Questions on the Duolingo English Test 2024 Bonus Tips!

This video covers everything you need to know about the Duolingo English Test. This video is going to be important for anyone who is going to take the test soon, but is unsure of what to expect. First, I'm going to talk about all of the different question types on the exam, including the brand new ones that were just introduced in 2024.

And of course, I will share some tips and strategies to help you ace these questions. And then after we've talked about the different question types, I'm going to share with you the important rules you need to follow when you take your exam. But very quickly, if you're new to this channel, hi, and teacher, Luke from detready.

com. And we help test takers just like you prepare for your Duolingo English test. We have courses and a practice platform as you can see here to help you get ready for your exam.

A lot of test takers have used our practice platform to help them get the score they need. So if you're interested, there is a link below in the video description. But anyway, now let's go back to this video.

We're going to start by going through each of the different question types on the exams, starting with the ones that were just introduced in 2024. The first question type we'll talk about is read and select. For this question type you have to decide whether a word is a real English word or not.

On the exam, you'll get one set of between 15 and 18 words for you to decide whether they're real or not. You will see each word one by one. And if you think it's a real word, you select yes.

Or if you think it's an unreal or fake word, you just select No, you are only given five seconds per word, which is not much time at all. So you have to act instinctively. And this question type contributes to your literacy comprehension and overall score.

Let's talk about some quick tips and strategies to help you do well on this question type. My first tip is that you should only select yes on the words that you are confident are real English words, and you need to avoid selecting yes on words that you don't know. The reason I say this is because the fake or unreal English words do look like real English words, because they follow correct English spelling patterns just like the examples you can see right here.

However, these are not real English words, because they have no meaning attached to them. A real English word is simply a word which has a meaning just like these ones here. So when you're taking this question type only select words you are confident, you know, because it is actually impossible.

Just to guess my next point is that you should not select Yes. On all of the words, I actually get asked this question all the time, and you should not select yes on all of the words, because if you do that, then of course, you will select yes on some of the fake words, which will lose you points. So in that sense, there is some sort of negative marking taking place here.

My next tip is to act instinctively, you do not have much time to decide whether the word is real or not. So when you see the word and you are confident you know it and you know that it's a real English word, select Yes, the next word will appear as soon as you click yes or no. Or if the time runs out.

And if the time runs out, and you didn't select yes or no, then of course, your answer will be marked as incorrect. The next one is a problem for a lot of students. And that is that they stress out too much if they think they've got one or two wrong answers.

If you just get a few wrong answers here, it does not mean that your school will be graded as zero for this question type. So if you make a mistake all the time runs out, don't stress just stay focused on the next word. And as for your preparation, it's so important that you continuously improve and build on your vocabulary.

When you're taking the test, it's hard to employ strategies to do well, because the time limits so short, it's either you know the word or you do not. So the best preparation is to continuously improve and build your English vocabulary. And one way you can do that is by practicing every day, you can practice learning English in general by using textbooks, reading books, watching movies, that sort of thing.

Or you can practice specifically for this Duolingo English test. If you head over to my practice platform on D et ready, you can practice this question type and then you can check your answers immediately with the dictionary definitions. That way you'll get used to the speed of this question type and you can learn which words you did not know a lot of students use this and they find it very helpful.

Okay, moving on to the second new question on the Duolingo English test in 2024. And that is fill in the blanks and it looks like this on the test for this question. You'll see a sentence with one incomplete words which you have to fill in the blanks similar to read and select, you'll just get one set of these on your test.

But the set includes six to nine sentences, you get 20 seconds per sentence, and it contributes to your literacy and comprehension sub scores. As for tips and strategies, here's what I suggest. I suggest you read the whole sentence first before you begin typing.

This will allow you to understand the topic and context of the sentence which will help you to complete the word correctly. After you've read the sentence once try to answer instinctively, since you only have 20 seconds, it's better to follow your first instinct and type out the word that you initially think it is. And in my experience, more often than not, your first instincts are often correct.

However, if that doesn't work, and it might not work, then you should look at the sentence for clues clues, such as the topic synonyms or any collocations that might inform you on what the missing word is. You should also consider the word type is the missing word, a verb, adjective, adverb preposition noun. However, like I said, because you only have 20 seconds, you don't have long enough to really analyze.

So you need to get used to doing this question type quickly. Which brings me on to some preparation tips. This question type is essentially a vocabulary question type.

It tests your knowledge of words in context. So you should continuously be building your vocabulary. Also, practicing this question type every single day will get you used to thinking quickly and answering within the short 22nd time limit, I can assume that it's rare for you to have to think so quickly in English like you have to do for this question type.

So practicing this everyday will get you used to that. Also learning which common affixes and root words commonly go together will give you more knowledge and help you to complete those unfinished words. After talking to my students, and seeing many responses on my Facebook page, I've realized that a lot of students find this question type to be particularly challenging.

So I'm going to be making lots of videos covering this question type in the near future for you. But in the meantime, practice every day and think about the strategies I just mentioned. And that will help you a lot.

The next question type we're going to look at is interactive writing, which looks like this on the exam. interactive writing is a another new question type on the exam, and it's a writing question that is broken up into two parts. Step one, you are shown the main writing question and you will have 30 seconds to read it and prepare step two, you have five minutes to write your answer for that question.

This is question one, which is the main question. Step three. You are then shown a follow up question for which you have three minutes to write a follow up answer the two questions, the main question, and the follow up question will be on the same topic.

So even though they are different questions, they will be related to each other. And this question type contributes to your production and literacy sub scores. And I know a lot of students really struggle to get a high score in production.

So doing well on this interactive writing question will really boost your production score, it's important that you write at least 50 words for your part one answer. This used to be a requirement you needed to write 50 words before you could submit your answer. I'm not sure if that's still the case.

However, if you want to get a high score, then you should try to write more than 50 words for your part one answer you have five minutes to write your answer. And in my experience, a lot of test takers are able to write around 70 to 100 words within that time. However, if you are able to write more than that is better point to is to learn about the different types of questions.

The question prompts can be either a recount, describe or arguments and in a full writing video I've made on this channel I discussed these in detail, so check the link below in the description to find that video. And you should write this paragraph in an academic and formal style. Most people take the Duolingo English test to enter a university.

So it's important that you're able to demonstrate that you can write an academic and formal paragraph. I've made lots of videos on this in the past and I will continue to do so in the future for this new interactive writing question. So subscribe to my channel to watch those videos.

It's important that you try to answer all parts of the question. Some questions have multiple parts to them. And it is important to answer all of them because task relevance is on the scoring criteria.

And that is related to the content of your paragraph. So Duolingo Do not only assess your English but they also assess the content. Basically how well you answered the question they provided for you try to keep your answer as closely related to the question as possible.

And to get a high score you should use at least one complex sentence structure for each of the parts part one and part two. Specifically, in regards to your follow up answer, write your answer so that it naturally extends on what you wrote. In your part one answer, you can expand by giving more details more examples or more reasons, however, you want to avoid repeating exactly what you wrote, avoid repeating your points, your ideas and your vocabulary on the scoring criteria that you can see right here.

It says that they want you to use a variety of grammatical structures and a variety of vocabulary. So you should try to avoid repeating the same ideas, points and vocabulary, I just showed you the scoring criteria. Let's take a look at that in a little bit more detail.

Point one is about grammar. Duolingo are looking for how accurate and how complex your grammar is, in your interactive writing answers points to vocabulary, how often you repeated yourself and how natural your collocations were. Next up, we have task relevance or content, how well you answered the questions and stayed on topic.

Remember, like I mentioned earlier, you should try to answer all components of the question. And it's important that you stay on topic. And lastly, we have fluency and coherence in writing to your lingo will assess how clear and how well structured your answer is, as well as how much you were able to write in a limited time.

So that's the basic scoring criteria is the same for all of the other writing questions and the speaking questions as well. However, the speaking questions have one more component, which is pronunciation. Those were the newest questions.

Now let's go on to the other question types on the T lingo English test. The next one we're going to look at is called Read and complete, and it looks like this on the test. For this question type your job is to read a passage and fill in the blanks.

The passages are quite short, normally around 100 words or a bit less. Most of the passages I've seen have been nonfiction. So factual reporting, but there might be some fiction based or story based text in there as well.

Let's talk about some quick tips and strategies. It's very important that you read the title and the first and last sentences before you begin typing. The reason being is that the title and the first and last sentences will be complete there'll be no gaps in the sentences so by reading those first you'll get an understanding of the context and the topic of the passage.

This will help you to activate your vocabulary related to the topic to complete the blanks. My suggestion is that you complete all of the words you know first so read it through and type out the words you are sure and you are confident you know at the start I don't recommend you waste time thinking about the words you are not sure of just complete the ones you are confident you know, once you've completed at once you read the passage again and try to fill in the words you missed and you use context clues to help you to complete the gaps of the words you don't know context clues could be topic information or grammatical knowledge. Some of the words in these passages will be content words, and others will just be grammar words like cruel which that so use both the topic information and your grammatical knowledge to complete the gaps.

Next up, we have listen and type a dictation question type and it looks like this on the exam. For this question type your job is to listen and type out exactly what you listen to. You only have one minute to do this.

And you can listen up to three times since you only have 60 seconds to do this task. The sentence that you're going to listen to won't be very long. But still you have to focus on typing exactly what you hear quite quickly because the 60 seconds will go by very fast.

Some quick tips, you should type out exactly what you hear every single word if possible. But if you're doing it and you miss a couple of words during a listening, just type out as much as you can the Duolingo task questions are graded on a sliding scale. So the more you can do, the better your score will be.

You won't get zero points if you miss one word. So how to tackle this question type? Well, first, you should listen and type out as much as you can.

Basically I think all of the key content words and then for the second and third listening you want to listen and fill in any gaps in that sentence. And you should use what you have already written in the first listing to guide you. And after you've written you should use your grammatical knowledge to read the sentence and see if there are any grammatical mistakes.

If you can use your grammatical knowledge then you can fill in any gaps that you missed you in the listening and other Tip is to actually practice typing quickly, you should begin typing as soon as you listen just to use all of the seconds available to you. Again, if you need to practice this with the correct time limits, then our website on d t ready has a tool to help you do that. The next question type is kind of similar.

It's called read aloud. So here rather than listening to a sentence, you have to speak it out loud. And this of course, test your pronunciation and overall speaking ability.

The time limit for this question type is the shortest on the exam. It's only 20 seconds. So again, the sentence you have to read out won't be that long.

I strongly suggest that before you begin reading out loud, you do read the whole sentence silently in your head silently is important, because you can do that quicker than reading out loud that since you only have 20 seconds, every single second is important. When you're ready, press record and begin reading out loud. Speak loudly at a natural pace and focus on your pronunciation.

And you should know that you can only record your answer once you can't read through your answer. After you've clicked record anyway, you only have 20 seconds. So it's really hard to do this more than once anyway.

Now let's talk about interactive reading. So interactive reading is a bit different than the other question types we've talked about so far. For each reading passage.

In interactive reading, you get five different question types. On top of that, you do get to interactive readings on the test. So you do the whole thing twice.

So like I said, there are five question types. Let's go through them quickly. The first one looks like this.

Here, you will read the passage for the first time, and you will select the best option for each missing word. There are five options per missing word and you select the best one, you should know that you must answer all of the questions here before you can move on to the next question type. The second question type in interactive reading is called complete the passage.

The first section of this passage is the same as in the previous question type. So you've already read it. But you are also provided with the second part of the passage at the bottom.

And your job is to select the best sentence to go in the middle to complete the passage, the option you select does appear in the text once you've selected it. So you could if you want it to read the whole passage to check that it flows smoothly. Next up, we have highlight the answer this test reading for specific information.

Basically, you're given a question and you have to find the correct information in the text. Once you found the correct answer, you simply highlight it. A lot of test takers asked me how much they should highlight?

Should they highlight the whole sentence or just a part of it? And the answer depends really, the amount you should highlight really depends on the question. But you should try to answer only what is necessary.

So that could be a whole sentence, or maybe just one or two words in a sentence, but just try to focus on highlighting what is necessary. And you should know that you actually get two of these questions per reading passage. Moving on to the next one.

It's called identifying the idea. Basically, this is a main idea question where you read the passage as a whole and choose what the main idea is, again, you've got four options and one correct answer. Last but not least, we have title the passage where you have to select the best title to fit the passage, even though the passage is still the same.

And this is the last question type, I do recommend you read it again and try to select then the best title to match the passage, there are four options with just one correct answer. So that's a summary of interactive reading, I went through it quite quickly, because there's a lot to cover, I have made a whole video covering it. So check that out if you want to learn more, but don't go just yet, because now we're going to talk about the newest question type on this exam.

And it's called Interactive listening. The interactive Listening section is broken up into two parts. First, you have the listening, where you participate in an academic conversation.

And then at the end, you have to write a summary of what the conversation was about. Let's first look at the listening part. Like I said, for this listening part, you are participating in an academic conversation, the key word is participating.

So you are one of the people in the conversation. Your job is to listen to the partner in the conversation, and then you choose the correct response or the best response for the conversations context. This is in the form of a multiple choice question where there are four options and you choose the best answer to fit the context of the conversation.

After you've completed all of the questions, you are able to read the whole conversation again. And I highly recommend you do that. Because the next part of this question type is writing a summary where you have to summarize the conversation you just had.

Now you only have 75 seconds to write the summary, which obviously is very short. So your answer will probably only be a few sentences long. Just a brief summary.

When you write the summary. I recommend you use the first person like I for example, I had a conversation with my professor about blah blah blah. Now the reason I recommend you do this is because in the conversation, the listening conversation You were participating, so you weren't involved in it.

So imagine that is actually you, when you're writing your summary, I had a conversation with my professor about, I highly recommend that you write as much as you can within the short time limit, because fluency is part of the scoring criteria when it comes to any writing question on the Duolingo. Test and Duolingo measures fluency by how much you can speak or write in a limited time writing a lot is very important. And the best way for you to write as much as you can is to learn a structure before you take the test.

In my video on YouTube cover in this question type, I did teach a structure in depth, but very quickly, just for this video, this is the rundown on the structure. The first sentence can be who did you talk to? And what about, then you can move on to the details.

So what were the ideas discussed in the conversation? And lastly, you could think about the outcome. What did you say that you were going to do?

This example is kind of long, like I said, you only have 75 seconds, so don't worry if you can't write this amount. This we're just here to give you some ideas of what you possibly could write when you do your summary. Now let's move on to all of the speaking and writing questions.

These questions do contribute heavily to your production score, which is a score I know a lot of test takers want to improve. So pay close attention here. Let's start with write about the photo.

For this question type you have one minute to describe a photo through writing. Now of course, one minute is not a long time to write about a photo. So your answer isn't going to be very long, you should try to write one full, complete sentence.

But of course, if you're able to writing two or three sentences will help you to get a higher score. If those sentences are grammatically correct that is, so let's take a look at some tips. The firstly you should look at the photo and analyze it carefully.

Take a look at the main subject in the photo, it could be a person of fear, call and animal think about what they are doing. Also look at the different items on objects in the photo and where they are located and what is near them. All of this information will help you to describe a photo really effectively.

My second tip is really important. And that is for you to learn a structure for writing about a photo before you take your exam. Now this is really important because describing a photo is not something we do very often in real life.

And it can be kind of awkward if you haven't prepared learning the structure will help you to generate ideas, and it will help you to write more in a short amount of time. I've made several lessons on this here on YouTube. So go and watch that.

But very quickly, the structure I teach looks something like this, you start off with a general overview of the photo. Then you go into more details by thinking about these questions, who is doing what and waters were just focusing on those three things can really help you to organize your answer better and write a longer answer. If you're interested in studying this in more detail, you should check out my production score program on my website.

This program has three courses all of which will help you with your production score on the Duolingo English test. And in this program, there is a full course dedicated to helping you to describe a photo really effectively. I think this is one of the hardest question types on the exam.

So I do recommend you take in that program to learn as much as you can about how to describe a photo really well. My next tip is to try to use descriptive language as much as possible think about adjectives, adverbs, prepositions, anything that can bring the photo to life. This will also demonstrate that you have a good vocabulary which will boost your score because lexical sophistication and lexical diversity are on the scoring criteria, as you can see right here.

And lastly, you should try to write as much as you can. The minimum requirement is one sentence, but you should be trying to write two, maybe three if you can. The next question type is really similar.

It's cool to speak about the photo and it looks like this on the exam. So this is very similar to write about the photo, but instead, you are speaking in addition to that you have 90 seconds to do this rather than 64 write about the photo, and most people are able to speak faster than they can type so your answers should have a lot more detail in it than in write about the photo. Let's look at some quick tips and strategies.

So you actually have 20 seconds to prepare for this question type. So use those 20 seconds wisely and analyze a photo as much detail as you can. When you analyze the photo look again for the main subject, what are they doing?

What are they wearing and look for other items or objects in the photo and look at where they are located or what is near them. You can also be very descriptive in your answer again using adjectives adverbs prepositions of place, but also you can tell a story about the photo as long as it is directly related to what is happening in the photo at that moment is not a good idea to talk about what is happening beyond the photo like what happened before or after. Think about what is happening at that moment the photo was taken and to boost your score.

You want to vary your grammar and vocabulary as much as you can. You have 90 seconds to do this question type, which is quite long for a speaking question. So you can go into a lot of detail.

And you can use lots of different vocabulary and grammatical structures. And it's important that you try to speak for as long as you can. The minimum requirement is 30 seconds, but I do recommend you get as close to the 90 seconds as possible.

So try to describe the photo in as much detail as you possibly can. So that was the first major speaking question on this exam. Now let's move on to the next one, which is called read then speak for read then speak, your job is to speak about the topic for 90 seconds, you will be given a prompt card like this, which provides you with a general topic, and then for questions to answer throughout your speaking response.

This type of speaking question is very typical. It's very similar to the IELTS part two on the speaking exam, where you have to speak about a topic for up to 90 seconds. For this question type, you have 20 seconds to prepare.

So during those 20 seconds, you should read the prompt very carefully focusing on the topic and all of the questions because I think it is a good idea to answer all of the questions you're given. The reason I think it's a good idea to answer all of the questions is simply because it will give you a lot of ideas of what to talk about, which will increase the length of your answer. So try to answer all of the questions.

You should also try to use transition phrases to make your answer smoother. When you want to transition from one question to the next, you can use a phrase like moving on to the next question. Or if you want to go back to a question you can say, looking at the previous question, again, any type of transition phrase will help your answer sound smoother.

And I did make a whole video on this. So of course, you can check it out in my YouTube videos. Just like with all of the other speaking and writing questions.

You want to vary the grammar and vocabulary in your answer. If you take a look at the Duolingo scoring criteria here, you can see that the first four points are about your grammar and vocabulary, all to do with the correctness of your grammar and vocab, but also the variety that you use. Remember that this is an English exam.

So the language the English grammar and vocabulary you use is really important for showing off your English and showing Duolingo just how high your level is. Another thing you can do to show off your English is to elaborate on your ideas. So rather than just give it a simple response to the question, always go further and elaborate.

You can elaborate by giving examples sharing reasons why you think so anything like that to make your answer more detailed, and you want to talk for as long as you can. The minimum requirement is 30 seconds, but I highly recommend you try to speak for the whole 90 seconds here. There is another question that's very similar to read, then speak, it's called listen then speak, it looks like this on the exam.

This is similar to read then speak. But rather than reading the prompt, you have to listen to it, which actually does make it a lot harder. The way you speak out, your answer will be very similar to read then speak.

So use transitional phrases use lots of grammar and vocabulary and elaborate on your ideas. But what's particularly important to this question type is that you're able to listen and understand the prompt, you can listen up to three times and you have 20 seconds to listen in total. After those 20 seconds or the three times you've listened to is up, you can't listen again.

So you not only have to listen, you also have to understand and kind of remember what the prompt was talking about when you're given your speaking answer, which of course is not easy. So it means that it is very important that during the listening you are able to understand the prompt carefully and speak out an answer that is related to the prompt or the topic. If your answer is not related to the topic and your exam might not get certified.

You might get an email like this saying that your answer was not related to the topic. So it is very important that during the 20 seconds of listening, you take your time and understand the topic. If you have difficulty understanding at least try to focus on the content words to what is the topic generally about and speak for as much as you can on that point.

The last two question types I will combine into one and it is the writing and speaking samples. These question types are almost the same as read then speak and read then write but the main difference is that your answers will be sent to the university along with your scorecard which means that the university or institutions you're applying to will be able to read and view your answers which of course adds an element of pressure to these questions. They're also graded previously, these questions types were ungraded.

But now they do contribute to your overall score. So it is important to take them seriously as they affect your score and the universities you're applying to will be able to view your answers. Okay, so those were the question types done now let's take a look at some of the important rules you must follow.

The Duolingo test is a unique test because you are able to take this exam at any time you want at any location as long as you're in a room by us out, which means there's no proctor present when you're doing the exam. So in order to ensure test security that you let go have a few very strict rules which you must follow. And I want to emphasize that it is your responsibility to follow these rules.

If you don't follow these rules, you'll get an email like this saying that your exam was not certified. It is very important that you understand these rules before you take the test. The Duolingo test readiness guide covers them in lots of detail.

Let's take a look at our readiness guide right now. When you go to the Duolingo test readiness guide, head over to page 14 And you can see the rules and these are some of the main ones. Firstly, to not use another person's name or identification to take the test.

You must be in a room alone and make sure it is well lit. I think that point goes unnoticed. You need to be in a room that's very bright so that the Duolingo AI can see your eyes because they monitor if you're cheating or not by your eye movements pretty creepy and high tech but that's how they do it.

They do watch your eyes. So in order for them to see your eyes you need to be in a very well lit room. If you're doing a test a nighttime make sure you have a very bright light so your eyes are visible.

Your Yours must be visible and uncovered and you cannot wear any headphones or earphones. This is definitely the most common question I get. The answer is no you are not allowed to use earphones or headphones, your Yours must be completely uncovered.

If your laptop is quiet, get an external speaker that's okay, but your Yours must be uncovered and visible. Keep your camera and microphone enabled for the whole time. And make sure your face is visible throughout the whole test.

You cannot use any outside materials. And you are not allowed to use writing utensils or any paper. Basically you can't have anything with you when you're doing the test.

So no notebooks, no pen, no paper, no cell phone, iPad, nothing at all. A lot of students are used to taking notes when doing an exam. But for the tuning go task you can not take any notes at all.

Next up, don't use a second monitor. Keep your eyes focused on the screen. That's a big one.

Make sure your eyes are focused on the screen for the majority of the test. When you're typing, you are allowed to look down briefly, you should try to keep your eyes focused in this type of region focused on the webcam or the screen or your keyboard. Don't look away for too long.

If you look away for too long and Duolingo think you might be cheating. So don't do that. Don't use any predictive text method.

That's another common question I get. You cannot use Grammarly or any other tools like that to help you to write your answers better. And don't close or go away from the test window for any reason.

Another rule that's not covered here, but I think is important is to do with your speaking and writing answers. You have to answer spontaneously. If you use a memorized answer, you might get an email like this saying that your exam was uncertified.

I know a lot of test takers like to prepare with memorized answers, but don't do that for this exam. Make sure your speaking and writing answers are related to the topic and are not memorized. Okay, guys, that's it for this video.

That was a full comprehensive cover of the Duolingo English test. I hope it was helpful. Now I really think you should focus on studying more specifically.

And for that reason, I think you should watch this speaking video here because it will help you to describe your photograph really effectively. Thanks for watching all the way to the end. If you're still here.

Put a heart emoji below in the comments to let me know and I'll see you in this video. Okay, thanks, guys.