Hi everyone! I'm Teacher Luke an expert Duolingo English Test teacher, and today's video is all
about the practice test. So this practice test can be found on the official Duolingo English Test
website. Every day, I get asked tons and tons of questions about this practice test,
so I thought I'd make a video answering some of the most common questions. On my facebook group,
I asked the members to let me know some questions they have, and I have chosen
five common ones to answer today in this video. So if you're currently studying for the Duolingo
English Test and take the practice test often and have some questions about it,
i'm sure this video is gonna be very helpful for you. So let's get this Q&A started.
Question one: Is the practice test reliable? So an easy one to start off with. The simple answer
is just, yes it is very reliable! Of course I'm talking about the official practice test
on the Duolingo English Test website there are other practice tests available, but they are not
official and to be honest there are quite a lot of mistakes in those practice tests. But the official
one is of course reliable. You can take the official practice test by going to this link here.
Once you have completed the official practice test, they will give you a potential score.
And this score is a very good indication of what you're likely to get on the real test. However,
it doesn't mean that you'll definitely get that score. There are a lot of other factors
to consider when you take the test on test day, but overall the official practice test is reliable
and the score you get on the practice test is a very good indication of the score you're
likely to get on the real test. Two, Is the real test harder than the practice test?
So, this is a really important question and actually I think that the real test is a bit
more difficult than the practice test. But not because of the difficulty of the questions,
but rather that the practice test is only 15 minutes long whereas the real test is 1 hour
long which means, of course, you'll get a lot more questions within that time. Actually when I took
the real test I found it quite exhausting because you have to answer so many different questions in
a very short amount of time. For most questions you only have one minute to answer and you get a
lot of questions within that one hour, so for that reason I found the real test more difficult than
the practice test. Also on the real test you have to do the speaking and writing questions
more often and most test takers find those question types the hardest, so based on those
two points: (1) the fact that the real test is an hour long not just 15 minutes and (2) that you
have to do more speaking and writing questions, i think the real test is a bit more difficult. That
being said the practice test is really good practice for you, so I highly recommend you
take that test as many times as you can. Does the practice test contain every question type?
Another really important question and surprisingly the answer is "no". It doesn't contain every
question type, the practice test is missing two question types, the listen to a prompt and respond
through speaking for 90 seconds, and the describe a picture through speaking. Again you have 90
seconds for that one too. I don't know why the practice test doesn't include these questions but
it doesn't and i think that's a shame; however, for you guys right now, it's really important
that you know that it doesn't and you can still study and prepare for those question types.
In the past I made a video on the describe a picture through speaking, you can see the card
here. Okay question four. How many times should I take the practice test? Well that's very personal.
I think that's totally up to you. There's not an exact number of times you should take the
practice test; however, I do recommend that you take it as often as you can because to prepare
successfully for this Duolingo English Test, you should do two things. First and foremost,
you should develop your English skills, grammar vocabulary writing and speaking, and secondly you
should become very familiar with the test format. And the best way to become familiar with the
format is to take the practice test, so I suggest you take it every single day, two or three times,
just to get familiar with it. Even though the questions might be repeated on the practice test,
it's still great practice, so my suggestion is to practice every day until you take the real test.
My practice test score is 90 to 130, what will be my score on the real test?
So, I get asked this question about 50 times a day on YouTube and Facebook, and unfortunately I don't
have an answer for you. Sometimes when you take the practice test, your score will have a very
wide range like 90 to 130. And it's very hard for me to predict your real score; however, from my
experience it is very likely that your score will be within that range, but whether it's towards the
higher end or towards the lower end is really up to you and how well you do on test day. So,
if you, personally, do very well on test day, your score might be towards the higher end. However,
if you do bad it might be towards the lower end. It really depends on how well you do on test day.
And like I mentioned earlier, the real test has more production-based skills, so more speaking
and writing questions, and, in my opinion, if your weaknesses in English are speaking and writing,
then I think you might get towards the lower end of your practice test score. So my suggestion is
to practice the speaking and writing questions a lot more than the other question types. Okay
and those were five frequently asked questions about the Duolingo English Test practice test,
I hope this was helpful. If you would like me to do another Q&A on another element of the test,
please write "yes" below in the comments and I'll definitely sort that out for you. And if
you liked this video please give it a thumbs up and of course join my Facebook group where you can
have discussions with me and other test takers. Okay thank you very much have a lovely day! Bye