Assessing Speaking on the Duolingo English Test

Abstract

This paper presents the Duolingo English Test’s speaking construct, situated within the Duolingo English Test assessment ecosystem (Burstein et al., 2022). We describe how the Duolingo English Test defines, operationalizes, and measures speaking through various speaking-related item types. The operationalization and measurement of the speaking construct includes the item-type design process and automated item generation processes.