Strategy to improve your DET Production from 95 to 140

Production sub-score is attributed to your Writing and Speaking performance, which is the most two difficult skills in English to most people. As a result, test takers find it harder to achieve high scores compare to Literacy, Comprehension, or even Conversation sub-scores.

One of our Premium members only got 95 Production in his first Duolingo English Test. He increased it to 140 in just a couple of months by applying the following strategies developed by native teachers and those who got over 135 overall scores. Are you ready to explore everything to enhance your Production sub-score?

Let’s get down to business. 

Note: This is a video version if you prefer watching instead!

1. Identify and improve your weaknesses 

When it comes to Speaking and Writing skills, there are so many aspects that an English learner can learn and improve over time, including Pronunciation, Grammatical accuracy, Speaking Pace, Writing Speed, Intonation, Punctuation, and so on. Therefore, knowing your weaknesses offers you a great opportunity to improve them. 

For example, our student took her first Duolingo English Test and got only 85 Production, while she needed at least 100 Production sub-score to get through the admissions process. She shared with us that she could only write around 70 words for the Read then Write question, which was a small number of words. 

Yes, you may ask that the Duolingo English Test only requires us to write 50 words, so 70 words exceeded their expectation. You are totally correct. Nonetheless, the Duolingo English Test is an English proficiency test; thus, the more you write, the better as long as your answer is related to the question. In other words, you will likely achieve a higher score for your Production if you write more. 

That was true as the student shared that she could write up to 120 words if she had more time, but unfortunately, she did not. Therefore, she needed to set the right study plan to upgrade her writing speed.

2. Set a right study plan 

You set a 7-day study plan basis and follow it until you achieve your goal. Because you are not yet good at writing speed, pronunciation, and grammatical accuracy, so you need to make room for improvement besides practicing Writing and Speaking skills generally. 

First of all, there is no way to boost your Writing Speed but sit in front of your laptop and start typing. You can write about everything you like, such as your journal or diary. However, it will be best if you practice your writing speed by answering Read then Write or Writing sample questions. No worry if you need to look at the keyboard sometimes because you are just practicing, so go for it. The more you type, the faster your writing speed; and one day soon, you will not need to look at the keyboard. 

Regarding your pronunciation, you will need to pay close attention to all sounds in the IPA because they are your foundation for pronouncing every single word correctly. In the IPA, there is a total of 44 sounds, including short, long, diphthong, voiced, and unvoiced sounds. 

How do you know if you mispronounce any sounds? If you are a self-study person, let’s go to YouTube and find some lessons. Otherwise, you will need experts to tell you. 

For example, this is our student’s study plan to improve her weaknesses - Writing and Speaking performance. 

As Writing speed and all writing questions are supporting one another, so we put them into practice on the same day. Therefore, if you practice answering writing questions, you will also advance your writing speed. 

What are you not yet good at? Share with us in the comment section; we may suggest a couple of ways to enhance your weaknesses.  

3. Immerse yourself in an English environment 

What country are you from? To most of us, who are neither native English speakers nor currently living in an English speaking country, it’s not easy to immerse ourselves in an English environment. However, you need to find one as it is the best way to improve your Speaking skills without spending much money on live training courses. 

We have several following suggestions to boost your speaking skills.

• Finding a friend or speaking partner: If you have any friends who are better at English than you, it will be an excellent choice to talk to them on a daily basis. You can ask them to pay attention to your pronunciation, pace, and intonation, so you can learn from their feedback and correct it all later. In case you don’t have such friends, you can also find a speaking partner at the same English level through DET international communities. We have a Facebook and Telegram community; feel free to join and find a speaking partner. 

• Joining English speaking clubs: Can you find any English speaking communities in town? If we don't have offline English speaking communities, we can search for online versions. Let’s join them as it offers you countless opportunities to talk to others about a wide range of topics and boost your confidence. 
  
• Taking online training courses: It is still the best option to advance your Speaking skills because you study with experienced and qualified trainers, who will evaluate your proficiency and correct your mistakes, if any. We know that it may cost you lots of money, but it is the best choice to achieve your goals faster with high probability.  

4. Widen your knowledge

Why do you answer some questions fluently and confidently, but for other questions you don’t? Simply put, because you don’t have the knowledge and information to deliver a response. Therefore, gaining knowledge and information about a wide range of subjects is an essential task to be more confident. Once you are confident, it will be much easier to organise your points coherently and logically for both writing and speaking challenges. 

So, how do you widen your knowledge and gain more information? Listening and Reading are two ways to widen your knowledge. Some people learn from reading better than listening, while others feel the opposite. 

If you love reading, just read, read, and read. But we strongly suggest you read a variety of topics in order to build a strong foundation of ideas on your test day. You can find millions of interesting and intriguing articles on NPR, Forbes, Fast Company, and so on. 

To those who love listening, TED Talks is a great place to rely yourself on. You will not only improve your listening skills but also equip yourself with excellent ideas from extraordinary minds on earth. 

You can share more studying sources with other DET test-takers. We truly appreciate your contribution!

5. Seek feedback and improvement 

You will improve your skills a lot faster with support from someone who excels at English speaking and writing. But where could you find that one? Usually, people need to take training courses or correction services to be corrected by experienced and qualified trainers. However, the service fee is sometimes high that most students cannot afford. 

You should not worry as we have an automatically correcting systems practice platform that you can get your answers corrected instantly based on several grading aspects, such as Grammatical accuracy, Lexical sophistication, Lexical diversity, Fluency, and Acoustic features.

Check out this video for a better understanding of your instant feedback and all the grading aspects for Writing and Speaking questions. 

The Final Tip is to practice, practice, and practice. You have thousands of questions on our DET Practice Platform to enhance your skills in addition to sample answers, an integrated dictionary, three supportive vocab lists, and so on to help you achieve your Duolingo English Test desired scores faster and more affordably.

Go to our DET Practice Platform, create your FREE account, and start boosting your scores today.