DET Writing Question Types

Four different tasks feed the Writing subscore, from a one-minute photo caption to a five-minute essay that admissions officers read themselves. All four are graded on the same four criteria, which means one set of habits fixes all of them.

What the Writing Subscore Measures

Writing takes up to about 19 minutes of the test in total, spread across four separate tasks. Three of them sit in the adaptive stage; the Writing Sample sits in the final stage and is sent to institutions as well as graded.

Question type	Per test	Time	Adaptive	Scored as
Write About the Photo	3	1 minute	No	Writing criteria: content, discourse coherence, grammar, lexis
Interactive Writing	1 (two parts)	5 minutes, then 3 minutes	No	Writing criteria, both parts graded together
Writing Sample	1	5 minutes	No	Writing criteria, and sent to institutions

The summary at the end of Interactive Listening is also graded on the writing criteria. Counting it, you write six separate pieces of English on a single DET sitting.

The Writing Tasks

Write About the Photo

One minute to describe a photograph in full sentences. It appears three times on every test.

Interactive Writing

Write on a prompt, then answer a follow-up question that is built from what you just wrote.

Writing Sample

The long essay at the end of the test. Universities read this one themselves.

Plus Summarize the Conversation, which lives inside Interactive Listening but is graded here.

The Four Criteria

Every writing answer on the DET is graded by AI on the same four criteria. They are Duolingo’s own, and they are worth learning by name, because each one tells you exactly what to add to a weak answer.

Criterion	What is measured	What raises it
Content	Task achievement, appropriacy of style, development of ideas, and the effect on the reader.	Answer every part of the prompt, then give a reason and a concrete example. Development is what most mid-band answers are missing.
Discourse coherence	Clarity, cohesion, progression of ideas, and global structure.	Linking expressions, consistent pronouns, and a visible shape: position, support, close. Paragraphs where the task is long enough for them.
Grammar	Grammatical range, accuracy, and punctuation.	A mix of simple and complex sentences and more than one tense. Range is scored, not just accuracy, so a flawless answer in five short sentences caps out low.
Lexis	Lexical diversity, sophistication, word choice, word formation, and spelling.	Avoid repeating the prompt’s own words. Precise nouns and verbs beat adjective stacking. US or UK spelling both accepted, but be consistent.

There is no fluency or pronunciation criterion for writing — those two apply only to speaking. Writing is graded on four criteria, speaking on six.

How Much to Write

Duolingo removed the minimum word requirements from the writing tasks in 2025, which caught a lot of test takers out. There is no longer a counter telling you when you have done enough. The grader still rewards development, so the practical targets below come from what strong answers actually look like, not from a rule.

Task	Clock	Realistic target	Why
Write About the Photo	1 minute	3 to 4 full sentences, about 40-60 words	Enough to move past naming objects into who, where, what is happening and what probably happened just before.
Interactive Writing part 1	5 minutes	120-180 words	A position, two developed reasons, and a close. Leave room for part 2 to add something new.
Interactive Writing part 2	3 minutes	80-120 words	A genuinely different angle. Repeating part 1 is the most common way to lose Content marks here.
Summarize the Conversation	75 seconds	3 to 4 sentences	Situation, main point, outcome. Full sentences, never bullets.
Writing Sample	5 minutes	150-220 words	This one is read by a person at your target university. Structure it like a short essay.

Typing speed is a real constraint. If you type at 25 words per minute, five minutes buys you 125 words with no time to check them. Practising typing is legitimate DET preparation.

What Costs the Most Marks

A long introduction. "This picture shows a situation that might be happening in everyday life" spends a quarter of your minute saying nothing. Start with the subject.
Answering half the prompt. Content is the first criterion, and an answer that misses one part of a two-part question is capped no matter how good the English is.
Repeating yourself in Interactive Writing part 2. The follow-up asks for an idea you did not already write about. Hold something back in part 1.
Five short simple sentences. Grammatical range is scored. One subordinate clause and one passive per answer changes the band.
Not leaving 30 seconds to check. Spelling and punctuation sit inside Lexis and Grammar. A final read catches the cheapest errors on the test.

How to Prepare

Write one photo description a day under a real 60-second clock. Describe the photo to someone who cannot see it.
Build a small set of flexible sentence frames for opinion tasks and practise filling them with different content, not memorising whole answers.
Draft one five-minute essay a day and have it graded on the four criteria, not on whether it "sounds good".
Practise the follow-up habit: after writing anything, ask "what did I deliberately leave out?" That is Interactive Writing part 2 in one question.
Type. If typing is your bottleneck, no amount of English study will show up in the score.

Model answers at several score bands are on the DET Writing samples page, and the band descriptors are on the DET Writing scoring page.

Kirill O'Nayd, Duolingo English Test expert

Written by Kirill O'Nayd

English test expert and educator at TestSucceed, where he builds the Duolingo English Test practice tasks and mock tests and has spent years taking apart how computer-adaptive, AI-graded exams award their points. See all TestSucceed preparation materials.