If your prep materials are from 2024 or earlier, they’re describing a test that no longer fully exists in its old form.
The Duolingo English Test is a roughly 60‑minute, adaptive English proficiency exam. Its most significant recent update rolled out on 1 July 2025, replacing older speaking and listening task types with two new interactive formats that define the 2026 test.
Interactive Listening
Interactive Listening now places you in real academic scenarios (e.g., talking with a professor or classmate). Each conversation begins with a Listen and Complete subtask: you hear a spoken scenario and answer 3–4 fill‑in‑the‑blank questions while listening. This is followed by Listen and Respond questions and a closing 75‑second summary of the exchange.
Key points:
- Scenario audio can be replayed.
- Each Interactive Listening set has about 6:30 for the conversation tasks plus 75 seconds for the summary, and there are two such sets per test.
Interactive Speaking
This is a multi‑question conversation with an animated AI interviewer (characters like Bea or Oscar), replacing the older “Listen, Then Speak” and “Read Aloud” tasks that were retired on 1 July 2025.
Key features:
- 6–8 conversational questions, each building on your previous answers.
- About 35 seconds to respond per question, with no preparation time.
- Questions adapt based on what you say, simulating a real conversation.
What hasn’t changed
- The test is still around 60 minutes long.
- It’s still adaptive, with question difficulty adjusting in real time based on your performance.
- Scoring still runs on the same 10–160 scale, across the same four subscores: literacy, comprehension, conversation, and production.
Frequently asked questions
No. DET still uses its 10–160 scale. Only the speaking and listening task formats have changed, not the scoring system
It’s a multi‑question conversation with an AI interviewer (Bea or Oscar), introduced on 1 July 2025 to replace the retired “Listen, Then Speak” and “Read Aloud” tasks.
Yes, if your materials predate the July 2025 rollout of Interactive Listening and Interactive Speaking, they won’t reflect the current task types
Yes. Difficulty continues to adjust in real time based on your performance throughout the test.
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