My last post reminded me of some advice I’ve given numerous times. Which is that if you are running a large-scale assessment, you should link your free practice material to user accounts. That way you have a never-ending faucet of useful and actionable data.

This is what Duolingo has done all along. Test watchers have noticed they way they stick new types of questions into the practice test now and then. Some of these have later gone on to appear on the actual test. Others have not.

The new 60-minute practice test is just an extension of this. I look forward to taking it.

It is somewhat surprising that the providers of legacy tests aren’t doing this already. I understand that it is easier for Duolingo to do this because most of their questions are machine generated, but if you’ve got access to decades worth of retired test forms you can just rotate through them as needed.

If you go to your Duolingo English Test account and click to take the 15 minute practice test, you will now be offered an opportunity to take a full 60 minute practice test. All sections of the practice test are scored. A nice opportunity if you are preparing for the DET. I don’t know for sure, but my guess is that you can take the full version only once.

I updated the TOEFL and Duolingo Score requirement tracker for December, and discovered that Carnegie Mellon reduced its Duolingo English Test score requirement down to 125.  This after increasing it to 135 in November.  Weird.

l updated the Duolingo/TOEFL score requirement tracker for November.  I was actually surprised to spot a couple of changes.  Carnegie Mellon increased their Duolingo score requirement by 10 to a total of 135 points.  That ties them with Columbia for the highest Duolingo score requirement.

I also noticed that the University of British Columbia now requires students to submit a waiver if they are going to use Duolingo Scores in their admission.

According to SEC filings from a few days ago, revenue for the Duolingo English Test in Q2 2022 was $8,192,000.  That’s a 22% increase over the same period a year ago.

At $49 a pop, we might extrapolate that the test was taken 167,000 times in the quarter. The actual number is probably a little bit higher due to discounts and free tests.

Here are the historic revenues (all USD):

Q3 2022 – 8,192,000
Q2 2022 – 8,036,000
Q1 2022 – 8,080,000

Q4 2021 – 8,095,000
Q3 2021 – 6,695,000
Q2 2021 – 4,833,000
Q1 2021 – 5,035,000

Q4 2020 – 4,197,000
Q3 2020 – 5,607,000
Q2 2020 – 4,598,000
Q1 2020 – 753,000

The Duolingo English Test now has a “faster results” option.  For an additional fee of $40, test takers can get their results in just 12 hours, instead of the usual 48 hours.  This could be useful for people with really tight deadlines.  Read about it here.

This is a great example of how Duolingo is building a better “Test Taker Experience,” a topic I’ve written about extensively here on the blog.  That said, the development surprised me, as it isn’t something I’ve included in my lists of suggestions for testing companies.  It is a welcome development, nonetheless.

One of Duolingo’s great strengths is its nimbleness, and ability to implement things like this really quickly.  For legacy testing providers implementing positive change sometimes seems akin to turning an aircraft carrier around.  Note how the IELTS didn’t get a home version until a few months ago, or how the TOEFL didn’t get automated speaking scoring until 2019.

A couple days ago the Daily Princetonian published an open letter urging Princeton University to accept the Duolingo English Test. The author’s heart is in the right place, but the article is full of incorrect and inaccurate statements about language testing. Perhaps someone from ETS or IDP Education Ltd should contact the paper about those.

Worth noting are the following errors:

1.  TOEFL and IELTS test-takers are not charged twenty dollars to send their results “to each and every university” they apply to. TOEFL includes four free score reports. IELTS includes five free score reports. The PTE includes unlimited free score reports.

2.  I think the author mixed up the “Pearson Test of English” and the “Preliminary English Test”. The latter is not used for university admissions. It was also renamed some years ago.

3.  Russians are not required to leave their country to take the TOEFL. The test can be taken from their homes, inside of Russia.

4.  The Educational Testing Service is not run by Princeton alum Robert Murley.

5.  The Educational Testing Service is not headquartered in Princeton. It is headquartered in nearby Lawrence Township.

According to SEC filings from August, revenue for the Duolingo English Test in Q2 2022 was $8,036,000.  That’s almost exactly the same as Q1 2022, and Q4 2021.  It is up about three million dollars from a year ago.

At $49 a pop, we might extrapolate that the test was taken 164,000 times in the quarter. The actual number is probably a little bit higher than that due to discounts and free tests.

Using the same math, we can assume the test was taken about 630,000 times in the twelve months ending June 30, 2022.  That’s quite an accomplishment given reports that the TOEFL iBT is taken about a million times a year.

Here are the historic revenues:

Q2 2022 – 8,036,000
Q1 2022 – 8,080,000

Q4 2021 – 8,095,000
Q3 2021 – 6,695,000
Q2 2021 – 4,833,000
Q1 2021 – 5,035,000

Q4 2020 – 4,197,000
Q3 2020 – 5,607,000
Q2 2020 – 4,598,000
Q1 2020 – 753,000

I updated the TOEFL to Duolingo Score equivalency tracker for October.  The tracker follow the TOEFL and Duolingo English Test score requirements at 17 schools in the USA, UK and Canada.  I’m mostly interested to see if schools adjust their requirements given changes to the score conversion charts published by the folks at Duolingo.

This month I spotted a couple of changes. Emory and Brown both increased their DET requirements.  Emory by ten points and Brown by five points.  Meanwhile, the University of Chichester appears to have stopped accepting DET scores.

Below are the current numbers.  Tap and scroll if you are on mobile.

The free Duolingo English Test Practice Test now includes a few new question types.  Note that these question types are not on the real Duolingo English Test at this time.  The practice test is occasionally used to pilot question types that may or may not appear on the actual test later on.  These questions are:

1.  Listen to a sentence in English and then repeat it. The repetition is done from memory, as the sentence is not shown on the screen.
2.  Look at the script of a short conversation between two people with all of the dialog from one of the speakers missing.  Fill in those missing turns by dragging sentences from a list of options.  After that, summarize the conversation by writing a few sentences.

Let me know if you see these on the real test.

I updated the TOEFL and Duolingo English Test score requirements tracker for September. Only Columbia University revised its DET requirements based on the new score conversion charts provided by Duolingo.  They now require a DET score of 135, which is the highest I have ever seen.  This should come as no surprise to readers, as Columbia takes its English language testing more serious than most universities.  Even after achieving 135 on the DET, most students will be required to take the in-house ALP Essay Exam, which is a grueling 105-minute affair.  Good for Columbia for having standards. 

The chart is below (mobile users should tap and scroll horizontally). 

Recent changes to the Duolingo English Test to TOEFL score conversion table have inspired me to begin a new series of blog posts.  Over the next year I’ll track whether schools adjust their score requirements in light of these changes.  In the chart below are 17 schools across the United States and Canada.  Also listed are their required Duolingo and TOEFL requirements as listed on August 11, 2022 and in the spring of 2022.  I used the Wayback Machine to get the older scores, so they are not all from a specific date.  I’ll check in with these schools now and then to see if the requirements have been adjusted.

A few things are worth mentioning:

• Update:  I found a couple of schools in the UK.
• There are a couple of community colleges at the bottom of the list.
• The schools were selected mostly at random.
• I have not listed IELTS scores, but I will create Wayback Machine archives along the way so perhaps those can be added later.
• Many schools still list TOEFL PBT and CBT requirements.  Yikes.
• I can’t think of any licensing boards or non-academic institutions that take DET scores.  But if you can think of any please let me know.
• All scores are for undergraduate admissions.

Before we begin, note that:

• So far, none of the tracked schools have updated their requirements.
• However, the University of Pittsburgh recently updated its DET requirement!  The TOEFL requirement is currently 100, while the DET requirement is 125.  In don’t know exactly when it was adjusted, but in March of this year the requirement was 120.  This should not come as a surprise, as I believe that a relationship exists between that school and Duolingo.  In any case, the campus is within walking distance of Duolingo HQ.
• A few of the schools have fairly high DET requirements and don’t need to adjust them to match the current conversion chart.  But most of the schools may wish to consider making adjustments to match the chart.

If any readers of the blog have an attachment to a particular institution, I will be happy to add it to the tracker.  Just leave a comment below.

Enjoy.

Recently, the charts that convert Duolingo English Test Scores to TOEFL and IELTS scores were adjusted.  You can see the current charts right here.  An archive of the old charts is available via the Way Back Machine. 

For instance, previously a Duolingo English Test score of 125 converted to 103-107 on the TOEFL iBT.  Now, that converts to 93 -97 on the TOEFL iBT.

Likewise, a score of 125 on the Duolingo used to equal an IELTS score of 7.5, but now that is equal to an IELTS score of 6.5.

There are also changes to the Duolingo to CEFR conversion chart.

I suppose this is due to the inclusion of new question types on the DET.  I don’t know if any institutions have adjusted their score requirements at this time.  I suspect that many institutions are totally unaware of the change.

To illustrate, here is the top of the current Duolingo to TOEFL chart:

And here is the top of the old chart (forgive the broken image):