Duolingo English Test scores and subscores

How Duolingo English Test scores are worked out

Every question feeds one of four skill subscores: Reading, Listening, Writing or Speaking. Your overall score is the average of those four, rounded to a score ending in 0 or 5. Duolingo’s Scoring Guide gives an example: 90 in Listening, 100 in Speaking, 110 in Reading and 120 in Writing make an overall 105.

Because parts of the test are adaptive, your score isn’t a count of right answers. Duolingo uses item response theory, which weighs both whether you got a question right and how hard it was. So two people can see different questions and still get comparable scores.

Your certificate and sending your scores

Your certificate is the certified result in your DET account. You share it online with the Send Results button, to as many institutions as you want, for no fee, and they can see it as soon as it’s sent. Nothing has to be mailed, and you don’t have to choose schools before you test.

A school sees what you see: your overall score and subscores. It can also read your Writing Sample and watch your Speaking Sample, which is a video, so they see you as well as hear you. Schools only see the samples from the test you send them.

Certified scores are valid for two years. Duolingo’s reasons include that language skills, writing and speaking above all, can fade when you stop using them.