Duolingo English Test study guide
Duolingo English Test · Work through your exam, one topic at a time.
The Duolingo English Test is an online English proficiency assessment from Duolingo, the company behind the language-learning app. Rather than requiring a fixed sitting at a test centre, it is delivered remotely and is positioned as convenient, fast and affordable: Duolingo describes it as integrating "the latest assessment science and AI" so that candidates can accurately test their English "where and when they're at their best." Tasks draw on reading, writing, listening and speaking together instead of isolating one skill at a time, and the test is computer-delivered and adaptive, so the items you meet depend on how you handle earlier ones and no two candidates see an identical paper. The Duolingo English Test study guide has 4 sections and about 1,432 words.
01Literacy: Reading and Writing in Tandem
Literacy reflects tasks where written input and written output meet: filling missing letters in a passage, judging whether a string of letters is a real English word, answering comprehension items on a short text, and producing written sentences about a prompt or a photograph. The engine is scoring word recognition, sentence-level grammar, and short-text cohesion at once, so a candidate who reads well but writes carelessly (or the reverse) loses points twice.
356 words, about 2 min02Comprehension: Reading and Listening for Accuracy
Comprehension is scored on tasks where you take language in and do not produce any: listening for real versus invented words, typing what you hear, reading short passages and choosing answers. Because nothing you write is judged for style here, every point comes from precision of recognition - hearing the exact word, reading the exact relationship between ideas.
357 words, about 2 min03Conversation: Listening and Responding Under the Clock
Conversation pairs listening input with spoken output. You will hear a question or a short prompt and then have a brief, fixed window to answer aloud - often around twenty seconds per turn, with no chance to re-record.
351 words, about 2 min04Production: Writing and Speaking to a Prompt
Production is the subscore for extended output: a written description of a photograph, a short written response to a reading, a longer writing sample, and a spoken description or opinion. Unlike Conversation, you are not reacting to a live interlocutor - you are building a self-standing text , so structure, length, and range all count.
368 words, about 2 min