Duolingo's English Proficiency Test

1.

As I was looking through Weibo(the most popular social platform in China, like Twitter), I noticed one of my friend’s weibo saying that she was pretty upset because her Duolingo English Proficiency Test’s result was invalid again. This was her third time taking Duolingo Test and for the first and the second time, the result was cancelled, too.

2.

For international students, taking TOEFL or IELTS test is a necessary step if they want to go abroad to have further study. However, recently, because of the coronavirus and quarantine, test centers for TOEFL and IELTS are usually not open, which significantly affects students’ progress and plan. With the suspension of traditional language tests, during this special time period, Duolingo’s edge has showed up. Many institutions these days announced that they’ll accept Duolingo’s test as a meansure of English-language proficiency.

Duolingo’s test has a log of advantages, such as its convience. To take a Duolingo’s English Proficiency Test, people only need a computer, a stable Internet connection and a microphone. Test takers don’t have to worry about being late, busy trafic or whatever unpredictable situation that may happen during the test. You can stay at your own room (a more familiar environment/comfort zone) to take the test.

Also, its lower price is non-negligible. Comparing with traditional language tests like TOEFL ($205), it’s much cheaper and only costs $49 dollars. Besides, for TOEFL, $205 is only for one test but for Duolingo, after paying $49, you have three chances of taking the test and you can choose which result to submit, which makes Duolingo’s test even more economical. Another part of the lower price is that, the Duolingo test takers could submit as much as their test reports to different schools they want online for free, but for TOEFL/IELTS test takers, only 4 test reports are free and they have to pay for the mailing fees of the rest reports by themselves.

The efficiency of Duolingo test center is also worth mentioning. On Duolingo’s website, it says test takers can get their results within 48 hours. This number is also impressive since it may take 15-30 days to hear back from ETS center to get the result.

3.

However, things are not this easy.

Since there’re no proctors while test takers are doing the test, in case someone’s cheating, Duolingo is pretty strict about test taker’s baheviors. I searched online, there’re many protocols here such as test takers must stay at a quite environment alone and if anyone else (or other voices) showed up in the video, the test’s rsult will be invalid. Rules like this are reasonable, however, the realization of some rules is kind of hard. Some test takers reported that while they were typing, even if they just looked at their keyboards for less than two seconds, their test results were cancelled. My friend’s even thinking about learning how to type blindly so that she would not need to look at her keyboard during the test. I could totally understand Duolingo wants to keep the fairness of the test, but sometimes things are not easy to compute. Since they could not tell whether test takers are looking at keyboards or cheat sheet, they just marked any suspicious baheviors and make the results invalid. This is understandable, but to some extent it’s also not fair to test takers who take the test seriously.

Also, although many institutions have accepted the result of Duolingo’s test, there’re suspicions that Duolingo’s test is relatively easier comeparing with traditional language test and has looser grade rubric, which may affect its credibility of the test. I checked some universities’ admission website and they only list Duolingo’s test as credible supplementary admission materials. What’re their attitudes towards Duolingo after the corona quarantine is still ambiguous.