About the test
Duolingo English Test (DET) is a standardized English proficiency test provided by Duolingo. It is cheap, available, and accepted by some universities. I won't go to the details of the test, which you can easily find on Duolingo official test manual: https://englishtest.duolingo.com/guide
I will share the do's and don'ts of the test, and how you can have a good score on the test.
Practice material:
1. There is a practice section on the DET site, which is 15 minutes long. It's a good point to start and will produce an estimated score range. The problem is that there aren't enough questions in this practice session. So, if you take the practice test 4/5 times, you mostly will have covered all the possible questions it can provide. Also, there is no listening and speaking section there, which you will encounter in the test at least once and it's really challenging. So, you have to find some third-party material that matches the actual Duolingo test pattern.
2. I found the following site run by teacher Luke that is tremendously helpful for practice resources:
https://practice.detready.com/
I bought a 7 days subscription and practiced from these numerous resources. The questions are much similar to the real Duolingo test divided by their difficulty level and the site is designed similarly to duolingo interface.
Luke has also a dedicated youtube channel for useful tips regarding Duolingo: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCCgyi5G7VHcn6zKXo_LTwFg
To me, these are enough to ace the Duolingo test if you have basic knowledge of English. However, this may vary according to your knowledge level.
Tips to have a decent score
These tips are derived from my experience, I have applied these techniques in the Duolingo practice section and got a better score range. Also, the trick worked in the real exam. So, I guess you can apply them especially if you are a non-native examinee.
1. In the Choose the actual English word section both for listening and writing, don't guess. If you are sure about the word, only then choose it, otherwise, leave it. Don't choose it if you are thinking that "the word sounds familiar, but I am not quite sure about it".
2. In writing questions, write as much as you can keeping the context intact. In 'Write at least one sentence about the picture' section, try to write two or more sentences. If you are a comprehensive writer, you may capture the idea in one sentence, but for non-native examinee, gathering everything in one sentence is nearly impossible in the given limited time. But if you can stretch your idea in two or more sentences, you can grasp more concepts.
Similarly "Write at least fifty words' section, write as much as you can.
3. In the speaking section, continue speaking and try not to stop in the middle. Of course, you wont be able to speak comprehensively, but like the writing section you can cover a wider area if you keep speaking.
Technical inconvenience and how to overcome them
It is difficult to always maintain the test centre environment at home, and Duolingo is sensitive at some extent to these issues. I am mentioning some common issues that can be avoided
1. In Duolingo, you won't be allowed to use earphones/headphones. So, if you are a regular earphone user like me, you can face difficulties during exam. So, I suggest to practise the listening and speaking section without using earphone, so that you can get adjusted with this form.
During the exam, I was afraid that I wouldn't be able to hear properly or my voice wouldn't be recorded properly. Before the beginning of the exam, you will be allowed to test your microphone and make an adjustment. I raised the volume level at my convenience, and I think duolingo software is fairly good enough to capture low voices if you raise the level properly.
2. Try to keep a calm room as much as possible. At the middle of my exam, some people are talking at my ground floor and there was also the sound of the dog barking. But it wasn't a problem for me. But try to maintain as much silence as possible.
3. Look at the camera all the time when you are not typing. Don't look elsewhere other than the camera and your keyboard. Some of us have the habit of looking off-screen unwillingly but try to avoid it in the exam.
4. Don't put your cursor outside the exam window.
5. You are not allowed to open any tab other than the Duolingo software during the exam and one drawback of the test is it doesn't warn you regarding this. Usually, some of our tabs are open like google chrome or apps like that. Close everything before taking the test. In my exam, I didn't take any risk and from the task manager closed all the running apps before taking the test.
6. Usually the front camera of our laptops isn't good enough to capture our id/passport picture. I really struggled regarding this issue and my result publication was delayed and the authority asked to submit the photo again.
So I used my mobile front camera which is of better quality. There is an app called droidcam which can be used to use your mobile camera as an external webcam. But the problem is that, the Duolingo software recognizes your integrated webcam by default and will not accept your droidcam. So, I disabled my integrated webcam from the device manager section, and Duolingo automatically chose the droidcam as the available webcam.
( Of course if you have a good webcam, you needn't worry about camera issues).
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