What are your strategies and tips to improve your performance on Listen and Select, Listen and Type, and Read Aloud? If you haven't got any yet, we will share several tips to level up your listening skill and strategies to aim for higher scores in this article.
I. What do you need to know?
1. Listen and Select
Requirement: You will listen and select the real English words in the given list.
Timer: 1.5 minutes
Sub-scores: Comprehension, Conversation
Appearance times: 4-6
Note: From 1 May 2023, Listen and Select is removed from the certified Duolingo English Test. So test-takers don't need to study this question type anymore.
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2. Listen and Type
Requirement: Listen to a statement and transcribe what you hear. You have 03 times to listen.
Timer: 01 minute
Sub-scores: Comprehension, Conversation
Appearance times: 4-6
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3. Read Aloud
Requirement: You will read a written statement and then speak it out loud into the microphone.
Timer: 20 seconds
Sub-scores: Comprehension, Conversation
Appearance times: 4-6
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II. How to enhance your performance?
You need to improve two major skills if you want to get a higher score for these question types, including Listening and Reading. Listen and Select requires you to listen and choose real words, so it’s all about your listening skill. Listen and Type requires you to listen and transcribe what you hear. Basically, if you can listen to a word, you can probably write it down. Otherwise, it will be in over your head. Read Aloud requires you to read and speak into the microphone. This one is similar to Listen and Type. You have to know how to read a statement first before speaking it into the microphone.
For now, let’s get down to business.
1. Listen, listen, and listen
There is no way to boost your performance on Listen and Select, and Listen and Type but practicing listening day after day. But how do you practice effectively every time?
We divide all English content into three categories: Easy, Just right, and Difficult.
a. Easy content:
Literally easy, that’s what I mean. You can understand over 90% content, which is good, but you probably learn nothing from it. Therefore, you should avoid this type of content for good.
The reason is that you will waste your time on something you already know and understand. There’s not much stuff for you to enhance yourself.
b. Difficult content:
If you do not understand over 70% content, it will not be suitable for you. Hence, you should not devote your time to this cause you will lose more time than what you can learn.
For instance, if there is more than 30% content you don’t get the meaning, it may cost you hours to look new words up and listen again. If you say you don’t do that, what is the meaning of practicing listening when you don’t even bother to learn new words? You may have your reasons, but our only reason here is to learn new words through listening. So, when you are on your test day, you will know how to transcribe them.
c. Just-right content:
You are right; this is the type of content you need. Suppose you can understand roughly above 70% and less than 90%. Congratulations, you have one English content to practice.
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In this type of content, you will learn a lot from it by utilizing your current level to guess the meaning of similar words or looking new words up in a dictionary.
Nonetheless, it is truly imperative to choose a short video in order to pay close attention to what you study. If it’s hard to find a short video, you can choose any length but only focus on about 07 minutes per time. The reason is that people predominantly are able to completely concentrate on learning for 20 to 30 minutes, and we come back after a short break of 05 minutes. Hence, you can learn and finish everything within 30 minutes for a 07 minutes video.
And, what should you do in particular?
Step 1: Choose a 07 minutes video, listen to it, and note down every new word on either your laptop or notebook.
You only stop your video to note down a new word but do not stop it to look new words up, which will cost you more time.
Step 2: When you finish a 07 minutes video, you have a list of new words, don’t you? It’s time for you to look them all up and kindly write down the meaning of every single word.
Step 3: Before moving on to this step, please allow yourself 05 minutes break. Come back to read all new words again, listen to your 07 minutes video again without subtitles, and look at your new words list.
If you do not understand 100% for the first time, it’s totally okay because it’s normal. Thus, you need to try time after time until you understand all the new words you have already written down.
2. Shadowing technique
This is an advanced language learning technique that you can use to improve your intonation, pace, pauses, and pronunciation.
It’s very simple, you listen to a model, and you repeat what they say in real-time.
This technique is truly compatible with our first strategy, “Listening to just-right content”. Precisely, after you complete learning new words in a 07 minutes video, it’s time to listen to it again and repeat the speaker right away for every single sentence.
And when you shadow others’ speeches, kindly pay close attention to their intonation, pace, pauses, and pronunciation in order to fully exploit it. It would help if you simply mimicked them as similar as possible. Moreover, you should turn on any device to help you record yourself so you can listen to your speech and correct mistakes, if any.
3. Review your words
There is a bunch of ways to review your words. Whatever you do, you should go over them regularly to remember them longer and use them more flexibly.
One of the most efficient ways to review it is to take a screenshot in the beginning, and then you just need to check the screenshot when needed.
Accurately, a screenshot offers you nearby words, a clear explanation, examples, and even its collocations to help you enhance yourself better.
For example:
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Here are two online dictionaries that we always suggest our students optimize.
Oxford Learner's Dictionaries
Cambridge Dictionary
Check them out, and you will love them!
III. Tips to boost your score
1. Tips for each question type
a. Listen and Select
Again, from May 1, 2023, this question type is no longer in the Duolingo English Test, so please skip this.
As far as we’re concerned, this is one of the most difficult question types to get a high score! Because you can only listen to one single word, in which you have nothing else to use as a reference to speculate. Furthermore, Read and Select shows you words to choose, but this one only lets you listen to the pronunciation, which is much tougher if you are not sure how it is sounded, far less what word it is. Nevertheless, the best tip is to choose words that you are over 70% sure of. Feel free to form any speculation, but do not pick words that you have a big doubt about.
As we already mentioned earlier, listening is the major key to advancing your vocabulary bank in order to face this question head-on. The more you listen to a wide range of subjects, the more words you will know and how they are pronounced. Besides, please pay close attention to each syllable of each word because some fake words may have small differences from real ones.
You stand a better chance to pick more real words by following these tips.
Special note: “Read and Select” and “Listen and Select” are the same. If you choose an unreal word, you will be penalized more than missing a real word. Therefore, be careful with your choice!
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b. Listen and Type
You know that short statements are a piece of cake. But how about lengthy statements, which will likely appear several times every test depending on your skills.
Some statements like this, and what should you do?
At a normal speech, within the first 02 seconds, you will hear “The final value would be dependent on”, which is easy, right? However, you will listen to the second part of the statement right away after the first one. Then, are you able to remember all of them?
If you say yes, wow, it is wonderful! We hope you can share some tips with us to help the community! If you find it hard as we do, the following tip is developed for you.
Using the Mute Button on your laptop is the key.
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You should get yourself ready anytime if this question type appears, and after listening for 2 seconds or any length, you don’t think you can remember more. Then, it’s time to click the Mute Button.
You should not be worry if you cannot listen to the rest. Of course, we use the Mute Button for that purpose to help you remember well the first few seconds.
People predominantly have memory shortage, which is why some feel hard to remember long statements in a short time. Therefore, optimizing the Mute Button can solve our memory shortage for good.
Once you finish the first few seconds, please click the Mute Button again to turn the sound on. Otherwise, you will lose your second replay.
Nonetheless, if you practice using this tip on a regular basis, you will certainly not forget to turn it on. Besides, it would help if you noticed all the pace while listening, so you can detect where you should put commas or other punctuations.
Should you type numbers in numbers or alphabets?
We have three types of numbers and how should we type as follows:
Just numbers, for example 15, 20, or 4.5: We need to type in alphabets;
Years, for example 2020, 2022, 2024: We need to type in numbers;
Percentage, for example 19.7 percent: We can type either in words or numbers; however, we strongly recommend test-takers type it in numbers, which is much easier.
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Special note: If you don’t remember how to type any words even it could be wrong, just type it. Because you will be penalized more for missing a word than mistyping the word.
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c. Read Aloud
Mostly, you have time to read the statement one time before recording yourself, as it’s the best way to minimize mistakes if you record yourself for real. Hence, we strongly suggest you do so.
Moreover, you should pay attention to your Content, Fluency, Pause and Intonation while practicing.
Content: If you miss any words or add new words to the text, you will lose scores. So the tip is to practice reading the text for once before clicking the Record button to read it aloud for real.
Fluency: If you can read the entire statement effortlessly, you will likely receive the highest score. Try not to stutter while reading.
Pause: There are some rules you need to follow: o Punctuation: We pause about 0,25 – 0,5 second when we see ( , ) and 0,5 – 1,0 second when we see ( . ), ( ? ) or ( ! ). o Relative pronouns: We pause about 0,25 – 0,5 second when we see who, whom, what, which, and that.
Intonation (Pitch): We have some patterns to follow:
- Yes-No questions: Rising voice at the end of a question.
Have you visited the US yet?
- Wh-questions: Falling voice at the end of a question.
Where are you going?
- Question tags to confirm: Falling voice at the end of the question tag.
Your exam is easy, isn’t it?
- Question tags to ask for clarification: Rising voice at the end of the question tag.
You do like him, don’t you?
- Normal sentences with ( . ): Falling voice at the end of the sentence.
I don’t think you should do it.
For example, if you see this statement, how should you speak it?
Protestors are mobilizing against masks, vaccines, LGBTQ rights, removing police from schools, and diversity.
Special note: The Duolingo English Test evaluates your skills based on Intonation, Content, Pauses and Fluency. Students can refer to our Sample Answer and learn from it how to read the text perfectly and give it another try to improve their scores.
2. Review your answer
Time after time, we always remind our students to review their answers after finishing any question. Apparently, you do know why we do it, don’t you?
Firstly, you can listen as many times as you like for Listen and Select as long as you still have time. Hence, going over all your selections again will minimize your mistakes.
You definitely should utilize all your replays regarding Listen and Type, no matter how easy it looks to you. Please be careful! Besides, you also need to double-check your spelling if you still have time.
However, we cannot review our answers for Read Aloud, as once you read it, you cannot check and redo it. Thus, it’s deeply imperative to prepare it properly before speaking into the microphone.
3. What shouldn’t you do?
Yes, there is a couple of things you should not do for certain.
a. Listen and Select
Again, the only thing you shouldn’t do is choose any word you are less than 70% sure of. As if you choose unreal words, you will be losing your points..
b. Listen and Type
You shouldn’t write the number “15” if you hear fifteen, for instance. Please transcribe everything in words.
c. Read Aloud
It will be best if you don’t speak into the microphone right after the statement appears because you may find unfamiliar words that you probably don’t know how to pronounce. It’s better to take the first few seconds to practice speaking thoroughly.
*Practice makes perfect!
Millions of questions, automatically correcting systems, an integrated dictionary, three supportive vocabulary lists, and more are waiting for you.
Learning all the strategies and tips is essential to upgrading your skills. However, we need practicing materials to apply all the strategies and tips for real.
You can experience millions of questions in our practice platform to test yourself. Our correcting systems assess your skills based on several criteria, including Fluency, Lexical diversity, Lexical sophistication, Grammatical accuracy, Acoustic features, and report detailed feedback to help you improve your score efficiently.
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Moreover, we also upload more questions on the 15th of every month, including similar open response questions to real ones, because we will be taking the tests on a monthly basis.
Watch this video for Automatically correcting systems sample.
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