7 Step Study Plan - Duolingo English Test

hi friends today we're going to talk about seven really useful ways you can study for the duolingo english test now as you know the duolingo english test is a bit different than other exams like the ielts or toefl so the way you study for it might be a little bit different and that's what we're going to talk about today but before i do that if you're new to my channel hi i'm luke an expert at duolingo english test teacher from det ready dot com head over to that website to get more information courses and other useful materials to help you study for the duolingo english test okay point number one is to know the structure so besides actually improving your english the next best thing you can do to prepare for this exam is to get used to the structure the duolingo english test is quite different than the other traditional exams like the ielts and toefl in a few key ways firstly the time limit you get from each of the questions is significantly shorter particularly when it comes to writing for the write about an image question you only have one minute and then for the longer respond to a prompt question you get five minutes to do that this is much shorter than the writing questions on the ielts and toefl exams the next big difference is that the duolingo english test is a mixed skills test that means that the reading writing speaking and listening questions are all combined together this is quite different than the ielts on toefl exams where you have a reading section a writing section a listening section and a speaking section on the duolingo english test each question type actually tests usually two skills and those skills are named differently as well we have literacy conversation comprehension and production this is actually quite different than the other exams but in my opinion as an english language teacher i think those sub-scores actually represent your skills in a much better way but anyway for you the main point is that you get used to this format because it's quite different than the other exams so how can you get used to it well luckily on the duolingo test website there is a practice test so just head over to the official site and you can take a practice test this is the best way to get used to the format and at the end they give you an estimated score which is super helpful to let you know if you're ready to take the test or not so i recommend you take the test every single day as many times as you can just to get used to the format i've also made full practice tests here on youtube so you can watch those videos as well and my next point is to strategize to do well on the duolingo english test or in fact any test in your life you need to be able to strategize firstly you need to think to yourself what are my strengths and weaknesses and particularly you need to be honest with your weaknesses and of course spend more time trying to improve that area so for example if you think your weakness is in writing then you should be spending the majority of your study time dedicated to improving your writing if it's vocabulary then you should be improving your vocabulary every single day so the first way to strategize is to realize what am i good at and what do i need to improve the most the second way to strategize is to know exactly what score is required of you universities normally require one of these three things first a good overall score normally around 100 to 110 but some do want an overall score of 120 2 a good overall score plus a good score in production again somewhere around that 110 mark and thirdly a good overall score and a good score in each of the sub scores so for example 110 overall plus over a hundred in each of the sub scores it's really important that you know what is required of you because you can tailor your studies to hit that requirement so how can you find out well let me show you so the first thing you do is go over to the duolingo test website and then go up to institutions and then who accepts the test i think this is an incredibly useful feature that the duolingo team have provided for us it saves so much time because you can just type in the name of the university in this search bar so for example let's say you want to go to the uk where i'm from and you might want to go to bath university which is a beautiful place and it should take you to the university's english language requirements page the language requirement for bath university is 120 overall so that's how it's done it's really easy to go and find out and it's vital that you know exactly what score you need before you take the test particularly if you need to get a good score in production and my study point number three will help you with that so study point number three is to take some courses to help you improve your score particularly your production score because that's the area most students struggle with and i have made some production courses so i'm just going to talk about those very quickly here so far i've made two writing courses one for the right about a topic and one for the right about a picture i am in the process of making speaking courses but they'll take a couple weeks in these courses i show you in a detailed way how to write and structure your answer i give you lots of practice and i show you plenty of sample answers on top of that there are tons of pdfs you can download to help you study so if you're at all interested in taking more detailed and organized courses with me you can find the links below in the description but if you're not that's fine i will keep making good youtube videos for free so definitely subscribe to this channel for that tip number four is to increase your vocabulary so the duolingo english test is really vocab heavy there are two question types specifically designed to test your vocabulary we have the read and choose the real word and the listen and choose so if you have a weak vocabulary it'll be really hard to get a good score on this test so how can you improve your vocabulary quickly well luckily there are some really useful word lists available now it's important you know that these are not provided by the duolingo test team but nonetheless they are extremely helpful to help you study and memorize some words really quickly the best one can be found on oxfordlearnersdictionary.com if you head over to that website go over to word lists you can find different lists at different levels i recommend you start studying at the b1 b2 and c1 level b1 is low intermediate and c2 is low advanced i don't think they have a c2 list available just yet i have put a link to this website below in the description i highly recommend you check that out study point number five is to read read and read so why should you read read read well isn't it obvious firstly it helps improve your vocabulary it helps to improve your comprehension and particularly for the duolingo english test it'll help you with one of the most difficult questions which is fill in the blanks the more frequently you read in english the easier this question type will become on top of that reading a lot especially about different topics will help you with the speaking and writing parts of this test as well because often those questions ask you to give your opinion but if you don't know the topic then you probably don't have an opinion about the topic so the more you read the more you will understand about the world and the more opinions you have to answer those questions so what should you read well of course you should be reading news articles daily different blogs about different topics and even people's opinions on social media like on facebook or twitter but if you find reading those kind of things quite challenging i have a better resource for you so if you head over to the bbc learning english website you can find a ton of free information to help you improve your english particularly for reading they do a review of the top stories in slightly more simple english so you can read about the topics you can learn some vocabulary you can get an opinion about them and it won't take you as much time or be as stressful for you next up we have do your own dictation okay so the dictation is another big part of this english test you have to listen and write down exactly what you hear luckily for us these days you can do this super easily just by going on youtube playing a small part of the video and writing down what you hear then you can double check your answers by looking at the captions this is a good and simple way to do this by yourself alternatively i have made lots of videos about dictation you can test yourself with those and again i do have a dictation course coming out soon in this course i will teach you how to use correct grammar correct punctuation and capitalization and provides you with hundreds of different dictation tasks from easy to difficult but the key point is that you practice practice practice the duolingo english test is not an easy test but it will become easier if you practice these things every day next you have to prepare mentally just like i mentioned in the first point the duolingo english test is a very fast exam as soon as you've finished one question the next one comes and you usually just have a minute or you have to complete it in a very short amount of time so you have to be prepared for that thinking quickly in a second language like in english for you is really really hard i know that actually i live in south korea and i speak korean almost daily and yeah it's it's tough it's it's truly exhausting but you need to get ready and you need to do it well so how can you get mentally ready well i recommend you take the practice test every single day as often as you can even though a lot of the questions will be repeated if you do the practice test often enough that's not really the point the point is that you get ready mentally in terms of knowing the structure and getting used to the speed of the test you can also look at your estimated score and take note is it going up is it going down if it's going down you've got a problem you've got to study harder but if it's going up then you know you're going in the right direction so that's how i think you should be studying for this exam if you want more writing practice click this video here speaking practice this one here if you want organized courses check the links below in the description thank you very much and i'll see you next time bye

Channel: English Teacher Luke - Duolingo English Test

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Keywords: duolingo english test, duolingo english test practice, duolingo english test study guide, duolingo english test study material, how to study for the duolingo english test, study tips duolingo english test, study plan duolingo english test, ietls or duolingo, toefl or duolingo, teacher luke duolingo, teacher luke speaking, teacher luke duolingo english test, study for the duolingo english test, prepare duolingo english test

Id: ihoprEjep6A

Length: 10min 24sec (624 seconds)

Published: Thu Mar 18 2021