Everything about the Interactive Listening

Beginning on May 1st, 2023, the Interactive Listening set will be added to certified tests, which makes lots of DET takers nervous because of its new questions and they don’t know how to prepare for these new question types. 

So in this article, we will be sharing all things concerned about Interactive Listening in the DET to help DET takers prepare themselves the best. If you want a video version on YouTube, try this one "Everything about the Interactive Listening and Where to practice".

Each DET-certified test concludes two sets of Interactive Listening. One will be a conversation between you and your peer, and one will be between you and your professor.

In detail, each set of Interactive Listening includes two new question types: Listen and Respond and Summarize the Conversation. 

Listen and Respond

• Time: 04 minutes
• Sub-scores: Comprehension and Conversation

In this question type, we need to answer 05 questions by picking one correct answer from five options in each question. Each question appears one at a time, after DET takers answer one question, the next one appears right after the audio from the system. All five questions are built in a conversation between you (DET taker) and your peer or your Professor. 

Test takers should listen to the audio clips carefully because we can only play them once. Besides, we can read the earlier parts of the conversation again if needed. 

While answering the questions, always pay close attention to the relationship between the two speakers. How would a student talk to a teacher? How would two students have the conversation? Moreover, it’s truly critical to remember the main ideas of the conversation that DET takers need to summarise in the next task. 

If DET takers answer one question incorrectly. No worries because the correct answer always appears to help students keep track of the whole conversation for the summary task that follows. 

Summarise the Conversation

• Time: 75 seconds
• Sub-scores: Literacy and Production

In this task, DET takers need to summarise the previous conversation in 75 seconds. There are no requirements about the number of words we need to write. However, in order to move to the next question type, we need to wait for 20 seconds to pass. 

DET takers shouldn’t worry if they didn’t choose the best previous answers because this task offers scores for completely different sub-scores. We only need to focus entirely on summarising the conversation. 

What if we don’t have any ideas to make the summary, what should we do then? Because it’s always a conversation between you and your peer or your professor. Therefore, there is something in common with all conversations, so we strongly recommend DET takers answer the following questions:

• Who was speaking? – You and your peer or your professor?
• What was the conversation about? Was it about a subject at school or a picnic you planned to go out with your friends? 
• What was the outcome? How did it end? Did you get what you want?

We always encourage DET takers to utilise all the time they have to show off their skills. The Duolingo English Test is an English proficiency test, so as long as we write content related to the question and pay close attention to all grading elements, we have a better chance to aim for higher scores. To remind DET takers, here are the seven grading elements for all Open response question types. 

• Grammatical Accuracy: the correctness of your grammar
• Grammatical Complexity: the variety and level of your grammar
• Lexical Sophistication: the level of vocabulary used
• Lexical Diversity: the variety of word choice
• Task Relevance: How well you answer the question
• Fluency: how much you can say or write in a limited time
• Acoustic Features: the pronunciation and pace of your speech (only for speaking questions)

The new practice questions of Interactive Listening are available on the DET Practice Platform. If you already have access to the Premium accounts, there is NO additional fee required.