About Interactive Listening
Beginning May 1, 2023, the Duolingo English Test is adding Interactive Listening questions. Interactive Listening provides new, innovative ways to measure the proficiency skills that will be used at a university.
There are two Interactive Listening scenarios on the test, each containing two components. One passage will be a peer-to-peer interaction and one will be a student-to-professor interaction. Both interactions will first have a listening component where you will participate in the conversation as a student by responding to your interlocutor. The second component will be a summarization of the previous interaction.
You will have a time limit for both respective components of each scenario. For the listening portion, you will have 4 minutes. For the summarization you will have 75 seconds.
These question types will contribute to the overall Duolingo English Test score. More specifically, the listening component will affect the conversation and comprehension subscores, and the summarization component will affect the production and literacy subscores.
Question Types
Listen and Respond
This question type asks you to either "Pick the best option to start the conversation.” or “Select the best response.” In this task, you will read a scene-setting scenario and participate in an interaction, while selecting the best responses to the other speaker’s turn.
There will be 5-6 Listen and Respond questions for each Interactive Listening scenario.
Summarize the Conversation
This question type asks you to "Summarize the conversation you just had in 75 seconds.” In this task, you will write a summary of the Listen and Respond conversation.
There will be one Summarize the Conversation question for each Interactive Listening scenario.
Test Length
The test will still be one hour long. To make room for the Interactive Listening questions, the Listen and Select item type is being removed from the test. Please see our Test Readiness Guide for more information about question types.
Interactive Listening Tips
For tips on how to answer the Interactive Listening questions, please read our readiness flyer.