Month: March 2024
Last month the Australian office of Home Affairs stopped accepting results from the computer-based version of the Cambridge C1 Advanced Test achieved after February 12. Test scores submitted after that date must be from the paper-based version.
Speaking of Australia, the REOI timeline has been delayed. If anyone knows what’s going on, I’ll be happy to hear it.
On April 15, the cost of registering for the Duolingo English Test will increase to $65 on April 15. The cost is currently $59. I learned this in the DET webinar for institutions yesterday.
You can avoid the increase by registering before that day, but remember that you must take the test within 21 days of registering.
I don’t know how bundles will be priced.
Pearson published its 2023 full year results a few moments ago. They indicate that the PTE test was taken about 1.231 million times in 2023. That’s an increase of 49% from 2022, when it was taken about 827 thousand times.
Clearly, the folks at Pearson are doing something right.
I think this means the PTE is now the second most popular test of its type, behind the IELTS and ahead of the TOEFL. I could be wrong, though, as TOEFL test volumes aren’t reported publicly. Just note that ETS head Amit Sevak has indicated a few times that the TOEFL is taken about a million times a year.
Once the British Council has released its 2023 annual report I’ll post estimated volumes of the four big English tests (and if anyone from a smaller firm can point me to stats for their own tests I’ll be happy to mention them as well).
I wrote a moment ago about changes to some question types on the Duolingo English Test coming April 2. A more important (to me) change is coming in July. At that time, the test will get speaking, writing, listening and reading subscores. These will not replace the existing DET subscores (literacy, comprehension, conversation, and production) but will be provided in addition to them.
This change will please many institutions, I think.
Subscore concordance tables (linking DET scores to TOEFL and IELTS) will be released in October. Again, there seems to be quite a lot of interest in this sort of thing. An old blog post about the 2022 change to DET concordance tables is one of my most popular posts.
Keep an eye on the official Duolingo English Test blog for more details in the near future.
Duolingo has scheduled an institutional-facing webinar for this coming Monday. You can probably get an invite by asking.
Some of the questions on the Duolingo English Test will change on April 2. Look for:
These question types should all be present in the free practice test now.
(source)
Duolingo has now posted Q4 results for 2023. Revenue from the Duolingo English Test was $10,819,000. That’s up a shade from Q3 of 2023, when revenues were about $10.6 million.
Since the test costs $59 a piece, it was probably taken about 183,372 times in the quarter, up from about 179,000 times in Q3 of 2023 (and about 171,632 times in Q4 of 2022).
My math says that the test was taken about 732,604 times in 2023. I believe that represents 10% growth compared to 2022. That’s just an estimate, though. The real number is different since some people pay less than $59 (there is a discount when two registrations are purchased at the same time) and others pay more (results can be processed faster for an extra fee).
For those interested in tracking the revenues over time, here are my numbers. The asterisk in 2023 indicates the last quarter when the test cost $49.