I took the Duolingo English Test last week! Below are the rough comments I scribbled down while everything was fresh in my mind. I had intended to post these right away, but I got distracted by financial reports over the weekend. I’ll post my score report and a few final comments tomorrow or Wednesday.
- The test has changed quite a lot over the years. If understanding tests is important to your work, I do encourage you to take it again. We sometimes understand English tests as being forever frozen in time (for good reason) but that isn’t the case here.
- Duolingo does not require test takers to carry out a room scan. That’s great since room scans extremely arduous. I’ve long recommended that testing firms seek out ways to administer their tests without a room scan and that testing firm. I’ve also suggested that executives eat their own dog food and put themselves through a room scan now and then. One notable throughline of everything I write about the DET is “reasons for its success that you might not have considered.” This is one of them. Room scans are a pain in the butt… and they seem to be getting worse and worse.
- I took the official practice test a day before my test. But it crashed just before the final question when I got up to close my door and stepped out of view of the camera. Maybe a bug?
- I like that I am still able to see my DET scores from four years ago. I can’t send them, but I can at least see them. In comparison, I can no longer see my TOEFL scores from the same period.
- During registration I indicated that I had previously taken the TOEFL and PTE. I was asked to share my TOEFL score report. I was not asked to share my PTE score report. No love for Pearson?
- Setting up the secondary camera was painless enough. It wasn’t difficult… but it was a bit awkward. I was never 100% sure that I had done it properly. Even after the test, I was left wondering if it would be okay. Perhaps more feedback could be provided during the setup process.
- I found the conversation tasks (aka “pick the next turn”) pretty hard. I made a mistake even when I was given an obviously lower-level one. And summarizing each conversation from memory was challenging.
- I believe I received a warning to keep looking at the screen. Or maybe everyone gets a reminder part way through.
- I got the usual CAT-related pangs of anxiety. Each time an easy item was displayed, I was left wondering if I had messed up one of the preceding items. The drop off in difficulty from one item to the next was noticeable. Even jarring, at times.
- When the DET launched, I wasn’t a big fan of the “is this a real word” and “fill in the missing letters” items. They’ve grown on me since then, as I think they are somewhat resistant to cramming and brute-forcing.
Anyway. This is somewhat disjointed, but I just wanted to get everything down on paper right away. Let me know if you have any questions about the testing experience.