Duolingo just published a report on the “Demographic and Score Properties of Test Takers,” which contains a ton of useful and interesting data about who takes the Duolingo English Test. It covers the year ending June 30, 2024.
The report indicates that the overall mean score is 110.5. Comprehension is the subscore with the highest mean score (118.06), while production is the lowest (88.97). Percentiles of overall scores and subscores are also provided. Numbers are also provided depending on test taker intent.
I was happy to see which percentage of test takers were first timers (68%) and repeaters (32%). I was also happy to see that Koreans students are most likely to be repeaters (42%). Norwegians, not surprisingly, are least likely (7%). There is some additional data about repeaters that you can dive into on your own.
There is also demographic information about age and gender and first language.
Most interesting of all is the list of test sessions by test taker ID. I will reproduce it here:
- India – 18.91%
- China – 15.88%
- Canada – 4.35%
- South Korea – 3.51%
- Brazil – 3.42%
- United States – 3.34%
- Mexico – 3.12%
- Indonesia – 2.78%
- France – 2.09%
- Pakistan – 1.94%
It isn’t surprising that India and China come out on top. Those are two very big sending countries. I was surprised to see South Korea in the number four spot… despite being physically in Korea. That’s an indication that test watchers must keep their eyes open and always be talking to people in all segments of the industry.
Missing is data on which countries test takers plan to study on, or the countries of receiving institutions.