Improve your Duolingo English Test writing skills

It looks like you are looking for strategies to enhance your writing skills, aren’t you?     

You have come to the right place as our Academic team develops this article to support your advance your Writing skills in general.    

First of all, we will share how to enhance your performance generally; and then we will structure out a complete step-by-step strategy to aim for a higher score in the Write about The Photo, Read then Write, and Writing sample.        

The strategy helped our member achieve his desired score in Production; significantly, he improved his Production score from 95 to 140 within just a few months.

Let’s get the ball rolling!     

I. What do you need to know?        

1. Write about The Photo        

• Requirement: You write at least one sentence to describe the given photo
• Timer: 01 minute
• Sub-scores: Production, Literacy
• Appearance times: 03

2. Read, then Write        

• Requirement: You write at least 50 words to answer the given question
• Timer: 05 minutes
• Sub-scores: Production, Literacy
• Appearance times: Only 01

3. Writing sample         

• Requirement: You write from 03 to 05 minutes to answer the given question
• Timer: 05 minutes
• Sub-scores: Production, Literacy
• Appearance times: Only 01

Wait for a second, is the Writing sample officially scored?   

Yes, it’s now officially scored as of February 28, 2022. You can check it through the Official Guide for Test takers for more information.    

II. How to enhance your performance?        

Writing is one of the most challenging tasks in the Duolingo English Test; we and many others have faced it already. Especially Read, then Write question type, which is much tougher. However, no matter how hard it is, we still have to step out of our comfort zone to deal with it, as it’s unavoidable.     

Therefore, we share with you how to improve your writing generally on a daily basis. While in Part III of in this article, we show you a detailed strategy to achieve a higher score in writing questions.    

Let’s get into it!    

1. Read, read, and read      

Perhaps, you are confused, aren’t you? How could reading help you improve your writing skill? What a question!     

The short answer is “A big yes”.    

The long answer is that we learn best by examples, and improving your writing skill is no exception. When we read, we know how professional writers and editors convey their ideas in words in the best possible way. Therefore, we strongly suggest you devote your time to reading every day.    

We have a couple of suggestions for you:  

• NPR      
• Forbes      
• Fast Company      

By doing so day in and day out, you will adjust your writing style by following the most suitable one with you, adapting and making it better next time.    

Furthermore, if you don’t want to lose points on a topic (Read, then Write or Writing sample) that you have nothing to write, you will need to read diverse subjects to widen your vocabulary bank and equip yourself with ideas about particular topics.     

Nonetheless, there is a ton of jobs you need to do while reading.    

a. Pay attention to their paragraphs:       

All academic essays have three parts, including opening, body, and ending. There is no other ways but following the structure to aim for higher scores. And you cannot achieve higher scores if you don’t know how to connect your paragraphs.      

We strongly suggest you read as much as you can and pay close attention to all paragraphs in every article. You will definitely learn a lot from them on how to connect paragraphs into one single piece.    

The only purpose is to make your answers enjoyable and inviting in order to lure and keep readers’ attention until the end. So, it will help if you learn how they organize their notions and apply them to yours.    

Most of the time, they use linking words to connect paragraphs together. You may see several types of linking words, and each of them is used for different purposes. In our practice platform, we have 16 linking words categories, so you can check them out by becoming our members.     

b. Highlight expressions, collocations, phrasal verbs, linking words, and note them down:       

Let’s take a look at our example first.      

We highlighted everything that we thought we could learn and apply to our style in an attempt to make it better.     

So, you should have a notebook by your side or anything that you can use for note-taking.     

2. Make writing your daily habit       

People predominantly prepare everything they need for studying abroad for over a year. So, you at least have a few months to level up your writing skills, don’t you?     

Whether you have months or only weeks, you need to take action right now if this isn’t yet your daily habit. Why? You already know that practicing is the best way to master any skill. You cannot expect to upgrade your skill without practicing properly.    

Nevertheless, what if you don’t know what to write? No problem, here are our suggestions.    

a. Ask a friend to chat      

This is important; the more you immerse yourself in a writing environment, the faster you improve your skill. One of the best ways to do so is to text your friends in English every single day. If possible, you should ask for help from someone better at English than you, because you can get the most out of it.    

b. Do journaling      

After waking up, taking a seat and writing down a list of tasks you have to complete on that day. Moreover, before hitting the hay, you should do some dairies about how you felt, what you have done, or what you need to do tomorrow. Writing them all down is an efficient way to improve your writing.     

c. Write about particular topics     

The Duolingo English Test offers millions of different topics, of which you only see one for a test (Read, then Write and Writing sample). Therefore, it’s undoubtedly crucial to list down all possible topics so you can practice often.     

The questions could be about Business, Finance, Society, Government, Environment, Food, Tourism, Weather, Animals, Plants, Agriculture, and so on.     

More importantly, after each writing practice, you need to correct all your mistakes and learn from them. We need others to correct our mistakes most of the time because we probably cannot identify our errors. But where can you find someone who is always free to correct your mistakes anytime?    

If you cannot, you can create a FREE ACCOUNT  on our Practice Platform with millions of practicing questions and automatically correcting systems to help you identify mistakes and improve your skills. We evaluate your answers based on Fluency, Grammatical accuracy, Lexical sophistication, Lexical diversity, and Acoustic features (only for Speaking questions).              

Every day, you can practice up to 33 questions!    

3. Be concise      

You need to practice this while trying to make writing your daily habit. It’s deeply vital to give only essential information because you just have a total of 05 minutes to read your question, brainstorm notions, and write them down. Moreover, you have 01 minute to describe one image in written form three times.    

Thus, being concise helps you deliver theses that only matter to make your work more appealing and coherent.      

*Practice makes perfect!       

Thousands of questions, instant feedback, an integrated dictionary, and much more are waiting for you.        

On top of that, you can learn from your mistakes because our correcting systems help you evaluate your answers based on grading elements, such as Fluency, Lexical sophistication, Lexical diversity, Grammatical accuracy, and Acoustic features (Pronunciation, Pace, Intonation), and report detailed feedback.  

Let’s take a look at this video to understand our feedback better. Go to your DET Practice Platform, create a FREE account and start boosting your English proficiency.