7 Steps to 140 in Interactive Writing | Duolingo English Test

are you looking to boost your score in the dualingo English tests interactive writing section A lot of students tell us that they want to go from a level 90 up to 140 as quickly as possible so in this video I'll give you seven tips to improve your interactive writing answers so that you can get the best score possible when you take the det so let's get started hello and welcome I'm Francis from last minute English and today we're looking at inter active writing before we get on to our seven tips let's just quickly review what

interactive writing is all about so basically interactive writing is responding to prompts prompts means questions and you'll get two prompts in interactive writing first of all you'll get a prompt and you'll have to write for five minutes so it might look something like this it might say think about a time you've been responsible for organizing something describe the experience and the outcome of your organization including specific details so you'll write and write and write for 5 minutes and then you'll get a follow-up question generated by the the exam by the AI and you'll have to

answer that question for a further 3 minutes and that might say something like can organizational skills be formally taught or are they something that some individuals naturally possess so it's 8 minutes of writing in total for the two questions and it only comes once in your DET and it counts towards your production and literacy subscores and what we're going to do now is take a level 90 answer so an okay answer but not very very good we're going to step by step build it into a 140 answer okay and it's going to be answering those

two prompts about all organization that we saw just before so first of all what I want you to do is to read this level 90 answer so you can pause the video we'll put it here on screen and just read through this answer see if you can notice any problems any mistakes any reasons why it wouldn't be getting a score of 140 [Music] so that's our level 90 answer you can also find that under the video If you prefer to read it in that way so that's our starting point let's take a look through these

seven tips to turn this level 90 answer into a level 140 answer and actually tip number seven is something that seems quite simple but a lot of people forget to do it so make sure you stick around for that one so tip number one is to read The Prompt carefully read the question carefully and make sure in your answer you include all the key information so this seems like a very simple tip but in the exam with the 5 minute time limit and then the 3 minute time limit you'll feel a lot of pressure and

you'll think that you have to start writing straight away so what a lot of students do is read the first half of the question and start writing and then they miss some important information in the second half of the question and then their answer isn't complete so let's take another look at the first prompt and I've underlined some important words for you so you can see it says describe the experience and the outcome of your organization including specific details now what I want you to do is I'm going to show you the first answer again

and I want you to see has the writer included all of the required information or are they missing part of the answer that they should be giving okay so just take a few moments read it and see if you can find the part that's missing have a try [Music] now Okay so which part was missing the part that was missing was the outcome so outcome means the result so they talked all about like the details of organizing but not what happened in the end so it would have been better if they'd added a little paragraph

at the end something like the one that we're going to add right now you could say nevertheless when the evening of the party came around I couldn't help but feel very proud the event was a huge success and everyone told me what a f fantastic job i' done with the organization so there you go that's the outcome and so we're reading the whole question and answering all parts of the question tip number two is to add linking words to your answer linking words can connect the ideas that you have and they make your answer clearer

and easier to understand so these could be contrasting words like despite however nevertheless they could be add like furthermore moreover what's more or they could be examples like for instance for example such as so now I have a little challenge for you I want you to read this paragraph from the answer that we've already seen and you can see some parts have an underlined area with a word missing your job is to choose a suitable linking word to go into those spaces okay pause and have a try now [Music] okay so which one did you

choose here's some possible choices you could say for the first one for instance like for example for instance the first cater I found cancelled and then the second one there were also a few guests from overseas let's move to tip three and tip three is using signpost in language signposts are the things that you see on the street where it says that way to London or that way to New York and in an essay they are words or phrases that let the reader know what's coming next for example let's take a look at this sentence

and I want you to tell me the underlined words signposting language what is the job that they're doing what are they telling the reader let's read it together moving forward I wouldn't rule out doing the same kind of thing again for another close friend or loved one what is the moving forward telling us it means that we are talking about our future plans or our future goals something about the future so that's one example of signposting language but there's many different examples another one would be to begin with to introduce your first idea or you

could say equally important is when you've got another point that has the same value as your first point you could say one issue was and here issue means a problem or a difficulty or if you want to give your most important idea you could say the main point is and remember the reason we use S posting language is to keep our readers really clear about what's coming next in our answer so they always understand and the overall idea of what we're talking about so it's very important if you're enjoying this video make sure to like

And subscribe and very exciting news after a long time of preparation our duelingo English test course is finally ready okay more information about that is here under the video but what I can tell you is that it's the most complete course on preparing for the det anywhere on the whole internet and it's designed to help you get 120 or higher when you take the det so for more information check down here under the video tip four for interactive writing is to upgrade your basic or informal vocabulary so when we're writing this kind of essay I

mean it's a short essay but it's still sort of an essay we want to use formal or at least semiformal language now a general rule to to know which words in English are more formal and which are more informal is that informal will usually be shorter several words together and formal will be one single longer word so here's another little exercise for you look at this paragraph that we've picked out and we've underlined three sets of words and I want you to see if you can upgrade them to use words that have the same meaning

but are a little bit more formal okay so have a try I'm going to give you one minute to think about it and then we'll take a look at some answers together okay so try and upgrade that language now [Music] [Music] [Music] okay so let's take a look at some possible answers the first one then instead of thinking back thinking back is okay and for speaking it's it's really fine but for writing we could say when reflecting on that's a much more formal much higher level piece of vocabulary okay the next one then is instead

of had to you could say I was required to already that sounds a lot better and then finally instead of do decorations we could say arrange decorations of course those are just a few examples of more advanced vocabulary if you want to get more we have a great video All About improving your uh Det Advanced vocabulary and the link is just here under the video so make sure you check that out let's move to tip five and that is including your own opinion and we've got five Expressions that you can use to start to include

your own opinion in your answers first of all from my point of view and you say your opinion or we could say it seems apparent to me that and your opinion or to my mind and you give your opinion number four as far as I'm concerned and then finally person personally speaking now these are all semiformal so they're good enough for the writing test but you can also use them in a natural way when you're speaking now let's take another look at the second answer that we saw before the second level 90 answer where do

you think would be a good place to add one of these Expressions about giving your opinion I'll give you just a couple of SEC 30 seconds to decide where it could be okay have a try now [Music] and okay so where did you choose I think the best choice would be right at the start so we could say something like from my point of view there are various factors affecting how strong an individual's organizational skills are tip number six is to include a conclusion now you might be thinking a conclusion there's only five minutes to

write and the second one there's only 3 minutes and it's not a disaster if you don't have time to have a conclusion but a conclusion is a really nice way to finish any essay and it doesn't have to be very long it could just be one simple sentence or maybe two sentences to remind the reader what we've been talking about so a conclusion will at least summarize the main idea that we've been talking about and if you have time and that's a big if but if you have time it can also include a final thought

that's like something to think about for the future so take another look at the second prompt the second answer and I've given you three choices for the best conclusion here I want you to decide which of these conclusions a b or c is the most suitable okay so you've got a lot of homework for this one but again I'm going to give you one and 1 half minutes to try this one so choose which is the best conclusion now [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] okay so which one did you choose a b or c I

would say the best one is B let's quickly read B together so it's all in all I believe there are various ways in which people can become good organizers and that's our summary of what we've talked about we've said okay some people have to learn other people have it naturally then the second sentence some gain this ability naturally While others have to be taught especially in a work context okay so it's pretty simple but it is a really nice way to make your answer more organized more coherent and try to give you a higher score

closer to 140 so we're almost finished with improving our answer but we have one more tip tip number seven and that is to proofread your answer now again you're going to say to me we don't have time to read it again it's only 5 minutes and it's true but the single quickest best way to improve your writing score in DET and in other exams like IELTS and TOEFL is to leave a little bit of time at the end of writing and check through your answer again because if you can find any silly mistakes you're going

to just give your score a little boost okay so time management super important try to leave maybe 30 seconds at the end of your writing and see if there's one or two mistakes that you can find and correct them so let's do a little bit of practice of that now here's a paragraph and this paragraph has three mistakes one is a spelling mistake one is a grammar mistake and one is a vocabulary mistake and I want you to take just 30 seconds very quick see if you can find those three mistakes and think what's the

correct version okay 30 seconds you really have to pay attention starts now [Music] [Music] okay very good how many of them did you find let's quickly look through so the spelling mistake was the word impressive that should have two s's the grammar was should be we don't say should to be we say should be and the vocabulary was taught them it shouldn't be someone learned them that's not right someone taught them so there we go those are our seven tips seven ways that you can take your interactive writing score from 90 to ooh 140 so

you can see both of those answers in the video description here under the video make sure you check out that 140 level answer it's very good and also here under the video remember you can find the information about our de course everything that you need to get 120 or higher when you take the det all of that information is down here of course remember to like And subscribe if you enjoyed this video I'm Francis from last minute English thank you for watching good luck in your DET I'll see you next time