Duolingo English Test at home: full requirements

The appeal of this test is that you sit it where you are. That is also its one real risk: the test centre is your bedroom, and nobody is going to check it for you. Everything below is worth doing a week ahead, not on the day.

The computer

• A laptop or desktop. A phone or tablet will not do — you have to type, and the proctoring needs a steady camera view.
• A front-facing camera that shows your whole face. An external webcam is fine. A camera angled at your ceiling is not.
• A microphone and speakers that both work. Test them on a recording of yourself and listen back — this is the single most useful ten minutes of preparation you can do.
• Headphones are generally not permitted. Plan to use the computer’s own speakers, which makes a quiet room matter more, not less.
• Close everything else. Other applications, second screens and anything that might pop up a notification.

Connection and power

The test runs about an hour and cannot be paused, restarted or resumed. That makes the two most common household interruptions in South Asia — a connection that dips and a power cut — into real risks rather than inconveniences.

1. 01Pick the most reliable hour you have. Not the hour everyone in the house is streaming, and not during a scheduled outage.
2. 02Use a wired connection if you can. If not, sit near the router, not two walls away from it.
3. 03Have a second connection ready. A phone hotspot with enough data on it is a cheap insurance policy.
4. 04Charge the laptop fully, and use a UPS if you have one. A battery that holds ninety minutes turns a power cut into a non-event.
5. 05Ask the house to leave the connection alone for an hour. Tell people in advance rather than hoping.

The room, and the rules people break by accident

This is where results get withheld, and almost never on purpose. The session is recorded and reviewed after you finish, so a problem does not announce itself — it arrives days later as a refusal to certify.

• Alone, with the door shut. Someone walking in to put down a cup of tea is a problem. Tell the household what you are doing.
• Eyes on the screen. Looking away repeatedly reads as looking at something else, whether or not you were.
• Nothing else on the desk. No phone, no notes, no second device, no dictionary, no earphones lying in shot.
• Do not read aloud or mouth the questions. It is a natural habit and it looks like speaking to someone.
• Good, even light on your face. A window behind you turns you into a silhouette the camera cannot verify.
• Nobody else audible. A television in the next room is picked up by the microphone during speaking tasks.

Identification

You need a valid, unexpired government-issued photo document — for applicants from Pakistan this means a passport in practice. The name has to match, the document has to be the original, and you will be asked to hold it up to the camera. This is the requirement with the least flexibility in the whole process, and the one most worth checking months rather than days in advance.

A rehearsal worth doing

Sit a full mock in the exact room, on the exact computer, at the exact hour you intend to book — speakers on, door shut, phone out of reach. You find out two things at once: whether your English is ready, and whether your room is. People usually assume only the first one is in question.

If you have not seen the format yet, the guide to every question type walks through what an hour of this test actually contains.