A step-by-step strategy to set the right study plan

We need strategies to achieve our objectives, whether they are small or ambitious. The Duolingo English Test desired score is no exception, especially if it’s new to you and you haven’t taken any English proficiency tests for a long time.     

We comprehend it as our team, and Premium members have undergone the same problem. They wasted their precious time, energy, and wages because they didn’t set out the right study plan to pursue their goals.     

Fortunately enough, you will not experience the same issue as we will share a step-by-step strategy to set the right study plan. Moreover, we also let you know how to study every day to obtain your dream scores more affordably and efficiently.    

Are you ready to explore?   

Step 1 Set your goal and acknowledge your English level                                    

1. Set your goal as specific as possible:                                              

Unless you undoubtedly know what you want to achieve, you will stand a better chance to accomplish it. In detail, we currently use Duolingo English Test Certificates to get through admissions processes to study in our dream university. Thus, you need to know crystal clear a minimum score that the university requires students to have and what time you need it.   

For instance, if you want to study at Columbia University, you will need to achieve at least 125 in DET before a specific time in order to start your study in an academic year. Now we know that you need to achieve at least a 125 DET score before a specific time.     

If you haven’t known the overall score your university requires, go to their website and check it out. However, you need to ensure whether your dream university accepts DET or not. Leave us a comment, and we will check if your dream university accepts Duolingo English Test. 

2. Acknowledge your current level:                                              

Some people see others get a 125 overall score or even above, so they ask for tips to get the same score, which’s impossible if you are not at the same level as theirs. You should know that techniques only help you increase your score slightly. In contrast, if you want to boost your scores significantly, you will definitely need a few months to achieve it, or you only need a couple of weeks if you devote enough time to practice day in day out, and there is a small gap between your desired score and English level.

“Opportunities don’t happen. You create them.” – Chris Grosser.        
 

 

You cannot set the right study plan without acknowledging your current level, can you? In order to create an efficient study plan, you have to know how good you are at English at the moment. We guess that you perhaps can predict your English level. Nevertheless, we strongly advise you to take the Duolingo English Practice Test and our Full Test FOR FREE.  

a. Duolingo English Practice Test        

Go to the Duolingo English Test official website to take their Practice Tests anywhere, anytime.

Please remember that in the Duolingo English Practice Tests, you can only test yourself for 15 minutes in addition to two question types excluded, including Speak about The Photo and Listen then Speak. If you want to experience all question types in the Duolingo English Test, let’s take our Full Test FOR FREE.

b. DET Practice's Full Tests       

Our Full Test is built and developed similar to the actual ones to offer you an Estimated score like the Practice Test provided by Duolingo English Test. The Full Test is as accurate as of the Practice Test on Duolingo’s official website.

First of all, it is the same as the real tests. You will experience all the scored question types and their frequency, like taking the real tests.

Secondly, we have our automatically correcting systems to evaluate your skills based on several grading aspects: Fluency, Grammatical accuracy, Lexical sophistication, Lexical diversity, and Acoustic features. It is truly essential to assess your skills based on similar grading aspects that the Duolingo English Test evaluates your English proficiency. Therefore, we developed our correcting systems to help you better understand your current level.

Thirdly, we have tested with hundreds of students with our Full Test. Their actual scores are in the range of our Estimated scores most of the time. When it comes to estimated scores, you will receive an overall score, sub-scores, and scores for each question type. In this case, you will know what question types you should focus on to improve your skills.

To have the most accurate result, you need to follow the rules of the Duolingo English Test as strictly as possible, and the best way to do so is to imagine yourself taking the real test. Last but not least, please give the test the best of yourself. 

If you want to take our Full Test, go to this Practice Platform, create your FREE account and start right today.

Step 2: Choose a suitable plan to study regularly                                    

We’ve checked most universities, which accept Duolingo English Test scores from 90 to 125. So we have a couple of specific milestones to pursue.   What is your most desired goal?    

• Aim for +90 
• Aim for +100  
• Aim for +110  
• Aim for +120   

Wait for a second, have you taken our Full Test yet? If you haven’t, you should stop here and give it a try immediately because it is a prerequisite to building your study plan. But if you already did, and you know your estimated score. We have two possible scenarios.    

1. Congratulations!                                             

Yes, you heard us. Congratulations!                                     

Suppose the lowest end in your estimated score is higher than your desired score. You will only need a couple of practicing days or a week to ensure your success. For example, your estimated score is 110-125, and your desired score is 105. Because 105 is lower than 110, you will probably achieve your dream goal. We call this the 1st scenario .                                   

In other cases, your desired score is in the range of your estimated score. You will likely achieve it because most people got what they wanted if their dream score was in the range of their estimated scores. Nonetheless, we still propose you practice for a few weeks to guarantee your success. And this will be the 2nd scenario .                                    

You can check our 07-day study plan basis at the end of this article!                                  

2. Let's try a bit harder                                   

Under this circumstance, your desired score is higher than the highest end of your estimated score.       

It’s time for you to find the gap between the lowest end of your estimated and desired score – let’s call this your biggest gap . You may ask why don’t we find the gap between the highest end of our estimated and desired scores. You shouldn’t because it would be easier to reach that gap. On the contrary, the biggest gap is much harder to achieve. Therefore, you stand a better chance to achieve your desired scores if you reach your biggest gap. 

For example, the lowest end of our estimated score is 90 , and our desired score is 120. Then the biggest gap is 30 - an enormous number, which tells you that you need to practice frequently to ensure your success on test day. Some more examples, if your desired score is 90, 100, or 110, then your biggest gap will be 0, 10, or 20, respectively.       

We will set our detailed study plan based on the biggest gap.  

• The biggest gap is from 0 to 9 – the 3rd scenario. We do not tell this is a challenge because you will likely get your desired score within three to four weeks of practice. If your institution doesn’t require a minimum score for any sub-scores, we strongly suggest you focus on expanding your vocabulary bank, listening, and writing. Why? Because it helps you conquer almost all question types except speaking ones. Most of the time, speaking skills require tremendous effort months after months to upgrade your pronunciation, pace, intonation, and so on.
• The biggest gap is from 10 to 19 – the 4th scenario. It’s similar to the 3rd scenario as you will be able to raise your overall score if you give enough practice. By the way, do not totally neglect your speaking skills because if you have four to five weeks of practicing, you can improve your speaking with our correcting systems.
• The biggest gap is from 20 to 29 – the 5th scenario. In this scenario, you will definitely need to advance your speaking every single day. Regarding our correcting systems, we help you detect your mistakes based on some aspects, such as Grammatical accuracy, Lexical sophistication, Lexical diversity, Fluency, and Pronunciation. So, you probably need six to seven weeks to reach your gap.
• The biggest gap is from or above 30 – the 6th scenario. It is the most challenging objective due to a large gap between your desired score and your current level. Nonetheless, you can achieve it if only you truly commit your time, energy, and concentration to your goal. In this case, we will seemingly need around 02 months to practice frequently. And, of course, we are always here to support you all the time. There are millions of practicing questions and correcting systems on our Practice Platform.

The below image is our sample feedback when for Acoustic Features when you practice Speaking questions.

Here is our 07-day study plan basis suggestion. There are a number of notes you need to pay close attention to get the most effective result. 

• Your scenarios: It depends on your scenario to decide how many questions should be adequate for practicing every day. On our Practice Platform, we have the Set Goals feature, in which you can set out your objectives for each question type on a daily basis. Of course, once you reach your goals, you will receive our Diligent Points. You can use your Diligent Points to exchange for more Premium days access.
• Your skills: You should know what skills you are good at and what skills you are not yet good at to set a higher goal to practice. For example, after taking our Full Test, you realize all the Listening questions are tough. Therefore, you set a higher goal to practice Listening questions than other question types.
• Your concentration: The below 07-day study plan table is our example for the 5th scenario. So we need around six to seven weeks to achieve our desired scores. Every week we follow the same study plan that you see below. We focus on specific question types on a daily basis. Feel free to set the number of questions you need to practice for each question type. More or less, it depends on your skills. Furthermore, kindly note that it is on a 07-day study plan basis. So, you may need to do it weeks after weeks to make the desired score secure in your scenario.

• The 1st scenario: You probably only need one week to ensure success. But if you want to increase the probability achieve your desired score, you should go for two weeks.  

• The 2nd scenario: Two to three weeks of practicing is required to help you get what you want. Following our 07-day study plan basis, you will improve your performance for all question types.  

• The 3rd scenario: You may need three to four weeks of practicing, in this case, to widen your vocabulary bank, boost your listening and writing skills.   

• The 4th scenario: This’s not so different from the 3rd scenario. You only need to work a bit harder and longer. You may practice more questions every day and four to five weeks to get what you want.   

• The 5th scenario: Because you need to level up your speaking skills besides others, six to seven weeks are necessary to secure your future success. But in this case, you need to optimize our correcting systems to detect your grammatical and pronunciation mistakes.   

• The 6th scenario: It's similar to the 5th scenario, but you need to work your tail off for two months consecutively. The price is crystal clear that you will absolutely achieve your desired score if you agree to pay it.  

• A combination: Our study plan is a combination between Your everyday practice and Improving your performance from the beginning of your plan till your test day. We have already published all Tips to help you improve your performance on all question types. Besides, we also shared all Strategies to optimize your ability so you can aim for even a higher score.

Apparently, whether you are in an easy or a challenging scenario, you still need to practice and upgrade your skills. From now on, you have everything you need to set the right study plan and then commit yourself to it. One more important point to add, you may ask yourself: “How could I know whether I improve myself or not?”  

You will know. Precisely, it will be detectable after several weeks of practicing, so you will see enormous improvement because you learn every single day. You learn lots of new words, phrases, collocations. You can listen to more complex words and lengthier sentences. You can write faster and more accurately. You can speak more with a wide range of vocabularies and so on.   

If possible, you can ask your friends to check on you often. As for the transparency, they can tell the difference in your English level the most from the first day until the last one of your study plan.    

Regarding our Practice Platform, you can experience all question types with instant feedback for free. Besides, we have an integrated dictionary, three personal vocab lists, and a goal-setting feature to help you learn more efficiently. Currently, we already have thousands of practice questions in addition to at least 10 Full DETs.

Feel free to check out our video sample feedback and go to the DET Practice Platform and boost your skills today!