Hi friends, I'm Luke and today we're gonna talk about seven mistakes a lot of students make when
they're taking the Duolingo English test. And of course, I'm going to show you how you can avoid
making these mistakes. But before I start that, if you're new to this channel, Hi, I'm Luke from
DETReady.com. Head over to their website to find resources courses and other useful information
about the Duolingo English test. Okay, then well, let's start with the first mistake. And it's to do
with the describe a photo question type. And the mistake students make is that they just label they
don't describe. In my facebook group, I have a lot of students in that that practice write in their
sample answers for this describe a photo question type. And a lot of times the students don't
actually describe what's in the photo. Rather, they just label it. If you just label you're only
using really simple sentence structures and a very limited small vocabulary. So you're not going to
get a high score. If you just label instead, you have to describe what you see. So let me show you
how this is done. First, here, I'm going to show you a sample answer where the student just labeled
the photo, and I'm going to show you why that's bad. And then I'll show you a good descriptive
answer. That way you can compare the bad answer with a good answer.
Okay, so this is a photo and this is what I mean by labeling. The student wrote, I can see six men,
there is a TV and a computer. Also, I can see a sofa. So of course, this is not good enough. This
is not a description, this is just a label. Instead, he wants to try to go beyond labeling the
items you can see. And you can describe what could be happening in the image, which can help you to
tell a better story. Okay, now let's take a look at a good answer. This student wrote, this is a
picture of a man giving a presentation at work. He's holding something in his right hand and
talking to the three men who are sitting directly in front of them.
Of course, on the Duolingo English test, you only have one minute to answer this writing question.
But still, it's really important that you go beyond the labeling, and try to describe what you
see. And of course, it's not easy, you have to practice this a lot. And if you want to practice
this question type more, I have made a video on this. I'll put a link to it below in the
description. And on top of that, I have made a full writing course, which focuses solely on this
question type. In this course, I show you how to structure an answer really effectively, a
structure you can use for any photo. Knowing a structure like this is really helpful because it
helps you to type your answer much quicker. I also show you easily how you can come up with ideas for
writing about any photo, and I show you how to use adjectives, adverbs and prepositions really
effectively for making a good description. If you're interested in this course, you can find a
link below in the description. Mistake number two that a lot of students make is also related to
writing and is simply not writing enough. So as you probably already know, there are two different
writing questions on this Duolingo English test, we have the describe a photo and the write about a
topic. For the describe a photo, you must write one sentence and you will have one minute to do
that. And then for the right about a topic, you must write at least 50 words, and you have five
minutes to do that. However, if you actually look on the Duolingo test website, and you go through
their criteria for how they mark these writing questions, then you will see that length is a
point that they emphasize, which indicates to us that they actually want you to write more than
those minimum requirements. So what does that mean? Well, probably for the describe a photo, you
want to write anywhere between two and three sentences. And then for the write about a topic,
probably around 75 to 100 words. Basically, you should write as much as you can, as long as you're
not compromising your grammatical accuracy or your lexical accuracy. But of course, that's easier
said than done. How can you actually write more? Well, I think the best way to prepare and to
practice is to learn a good structure, a good structure can help you because regardless of the
photo, or the question you get, you know how you're going to answer the question. So you don't
waste valuable time thinking like, Oh my god, how do I even answer it, you know exactly what your
first sentence will be your second, your third and so on. And in my courses, like I mentioned
earlier, I do show you how to structure your answers for both of these question types. And I
give you lots of examples and different questions you can practice with. But in this video, I'll
give you a quick overview of a good structure you can use for both of those question types.
Okay, so this is the first question type which is the describe a photo. Again, like I mentioned, you
should probably try to do around two, maybe three sentences. Three might be too many. If you're slow
typer but you should try to do too. In sentence one, you want to talk about the main subject. For
example, This photo shows two women holding hands in a green field. The main subject, of course, in
this photo is those two women. Sentence two is about adding more details. And you can add more
details by thinking about these two things. One, who is doing what? And two? What is where, in this
example I did, who is doing what? And I looked at the lady on the right, I said, the woman on the
right is taking a photo with her camera and laughing loudly.
Then sentence three is where you can speculate. Now you might not have time to do three sentences,
and that's okay. But if you do, then you can speculate, for example, they must be best friends.
That's a speculation. I don't know that I'm just guessing. And for the right about a topic,
question type, a good structure would look like this, we have a topic sentence which outlines your
main idea or your main thesis of your paragraph, then you have supporting ideas with examples, I
would suggest that you do around two of the supporting ideas. And then you finish off with a
concluding sentence. Okay, let me show you what I mean by giving you an example. My topic sentence
is, I agree that employers should offer longer holidays to increase productivity. This is a topic
sentence, it shows exactly what my whole paragraph is going to be about. And I provided two
supporting ideas which backup my topic sentence, and I gave examples as well. You can read these by
yourself. And then at the end, I had a simple concluding sentence. Again, you can read this by
yourself. The best thing about learning the structure is that you can actually write more,
because you know how to answer the questions. So as soon as you see the photo, or as soon as you
read the prompt for the writing question, you can start typing right away. And this will save you
valuable seconds on this test. So this one was brought to my attention on my Facebook group by
Andreas Leon. And he said, what do you do if you get sidetracked or go off topic? Can you resume
talking as if nothing happened? Or should he use a phrase? Like, let me rephrase this to get back on
topic? And I think that's a really great question. And I think it's really important that you try to
stay on topic when you're answering the speaking question, because on the Duolingo, test criteria,
task, relevance is a point that they emphasize. So it's quite important not to lose focus and go off
topic. But if you do try to come back on by using special phrases, and there are lots of phrases you
can use. Just like Andre said, let me rephrase this. That's a totally fine one. But let me show
you a few more.
Okay, so here are some phrases you can use when you want to get back to topic, you can say. So
anyway, getting back to my story, as I was saying, Let me rephrase that, or where was I? These are
all different phrases you can use when you find that you go off topic, but want to get back to the
main question that's being asked of you. It's also important to know that on the speaking questions,
they do give you points to talk about. And I strongly recommend that you just go through each
of the questions one by one, this is helpful because it's basically a guide to help you to
answer this question effectively. And again, there are different transition phrases you can use when
you want to go from one question to another. So let me show you a few of those here.
So we can call them linking phrases, for example, in regards to the first question, or moving on to
the next question. Also, you can say, as for the next or final question, or just before you
conclude, you can say one more thing I'd like to add is. So using all of those phrases, the phrases
to get back to topic, and different sequencing phrases you can use to go from question to
question will help you to actually answer the question more fully, and probably help you to
speak for longer. Again, even for speaking length is really important. Don't select all the words.
So this is a question I get asked surprisingly often, it is about choosing all of the words on a
vocabulary question types, just in case you don't know there are two vocab question types on the
Duolingo test. One is reads all of these words and choose the real English ones. And the other is
very similar. Instead, you have to listen to a bunch of words and choose the real ones. But some
students, they asked me, can I just choose all of the words that way I'm bound to select them all of
the real ones? And yeah, that's true. But if you do that, you're also selecting all of the fake
words which will cost you points. So there is some sort of negative marking going on. So the rule is
simply only select the words you are sure are real English words. It's actually impossible to guess
if you're not sure, because all of the words look like real words, but they're not all
Some of them are so avoided choosing all of the words, spelling and punctuation mistakes. So
unfortunately, spelling and punctuation is really important in all of the writing tasks. And also
the dictation task as well. English spelling is kind of messed up and that makes it really hard to
study and actually really hard to teach. So the best thing you can do to practice your spelling is
to read a lot and also practice typing on Microsoft Word or Grammarly without a spell
checker, and then going back and checking your spelling mistakes through those programs. That way
you can figure out the words you don't actually know how to spell punctuation is also really
tricky, but the rules are a lot clearer. Okay, so firstly, you always need to start your sentence
with a capital letter and finish with a full stop, even for the dictation question type. And then
more advanced grammatical structures might require a comma. So using a comma is a bit complicated,
but I will make a full video for you showing you exactly how to use a comma correctly. But for this
video, I have three simple rules to show you.
Okay, number one, you should use a comma in a list, especially for nouns and verbs, and
sometimes for adjectives as well. For example, everything was ready for my trip, I had my camera
money and airplane ticket. So when you're writing out our list, it's important to use a comma to
separate the items, but there is a little bit of confusion. So in British English, normally, we
don't put a comma before the last item. For example, in British English, it's much more common
to write I had my camera, comma, money and plane ticket, but in American English, they would write
it like this. I had my money, comma, camera, comma and plane ticket. Both are correct. And the
Duolingo test has stated that they do accept both British and American English spelling, and I
assume punctuation as well. Personally, actually, I'm British, but I actually like the American
style, I think it's a lot clearer. Okay, the next rule is,
you should put a comma in front of the fanboys, which are used to join two independent clauses.
fanboys is an acronym that stands for for and nor, but or yet, so I made a video in the past, which
discusses fanboys in a lot more detail. And also in my full courses, I go into a lot of detail in
the fanboys and show you lots of different examples. But basically, you should use a fanboy,
when you want to connect two independent clauses. And before the fanboy there should be a comma.
independent clauses are basically clauses which include their own subject. For example, I could
say, jack wanted to go to university, but he didn't get accepted. So that sentence has two
subjects, jack in the first clause, and he in the second clause, and I connected those two subjects
with the word but which is a fanboy. And of course, I used a comma before but next mistake is
not knowing the time limits for the different question types. So the Duolingo English test has a
lot of different question types 10 in total, which are graded, and then two, which are interview
focused, those are ungraded, but they are sent to your university. So because there are so many
different question types, you need to know exactly how much time you have for each question type
before you take the test. Of course, when you take the real test, there is a timer in the top left
hand corner. But before you take the test, you should also know exactly how much time you have
for each question type. That way, you can prepare really effectively. So let me quickly show you
this here.
So here is the maximum time limit you get for each of the different question types. You should read
this by yourself. And I kind of recommend that you memorize these so that there's no surprises when
you take the real test.
So that's the maximum amount of time you have for each question type. If you do finish quicker, you
can click next, that's totally fine. That won't affect your score anyway, so you won't get a
better score for clicking Next, or you won't get a worse score if you just let it run through. So the
Duolingo English test requires you to think and answer quickly. Because it's a computer based
test. It also requires you to type quickly. And if you're anything like me, then you type really,
really slowly. And this could end up hurting your score because you can't answer as much as you
would like to because you're slower typing. So basically, the best way to improve your typing
speed is to practice and I actually have been practicing on this website.
It's free and it's a really good resource you can use to practice typing and actually monitor your
typing speed. I think this is really useful and I would recommend doing this for about 10 minutes or
20 minutes every single day before you take the test in order to boost your typing speed. And if
you want
to practice more, don't forget, I have made lots of videos. So here's a write in practice lesson
and here is a speaking practice lesson. Okay, thank you very much for watching and I'll see you
next time. Bye