Duolingo English Test

The DET is taken from home at any time, costs considerably less than IELTS or TOEFL, and returns a result within forty-eight hours. It is accepted in the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, Australia and a growing number of other countries.

Acceptance is wide but not universal, and that is the one thing to check before choosing it. Confirm on the admission page of the university you are applying to, together with the minimum score it asks for.

Format

Adaptive section, 45 minutes, graded

The main section adapts: the difficulty of each question adjusts to your previous answers, so the test ends once the scoring engine is confident rather than after a fixed number of questions. Question types appear without a fixed sequence.

Writing and speaking sample, 10 minutes

After the adaptive section you write a short response to a prompt and record a spoken one. These are sent to universities alongside your score so admissions offices can judge your English directly, and they now also count toward the score itself.

Scoring

Scores run from 10 to 160, reported as a single overall number alongside four subscores: Literacy, Comprehension, Conversation and Production. Universities usually publish an overall minimum; the subscores tell an admissions office where your strengths sit.

What our practice covers

The practice test simulates the three written question types from the adaptive section: Read and Select, Fill in the Blanks and Read and Complete. These carry the reading and literacy skills that underpin much of the overall score. Interactive Listening and Interactive Speaking need audio and a microphone and are not included.

The score you receive is an estimate drawn from those three sections. It is a meaningful benchmark, and it will differ from an official DET score, which runs every question type through the full adaptive algorithm.

One consequence of the adaptive design is worth planning around: because difficulty responds to your answers, a run of early mistakes narrows the range the engine is working in. How adaptive routing works.