Duolingo Read & Complete: What 40 Official Samples Say About How to Solve It
A lot of students treat Read & Complete as a vocabulary test. They grab the hardest word first and burn their time on it. To check whether that is really what this task tests, we went through all 40 Read and Complete questions in Duolingo's official sample booklet and counted every blank. The results were not what we expected.
At a glance (official sources)
- Time: 3 minutes per passage.
- Frequency: 3 to 6 times per test.
- Format: some words in the passage are missing their second half. You type the missing letters. US spelling.
- Scoring: a blank you skip and a blank you get wrong score the same. So always type something.
(Sources: Duolingo English Test Official Guide and the official Sample Questions booklet)
What 40 official samples look like
| Item | 40 official samples |
|---|---|
| Passage length | 64 words on average (46 to 81) |
| Blanks per passage | About 12 on average (as few as 4, as many as 22) |
| Time per blank | 3 minutes ÷ 12 = about 15 seconds |
| Function words among blanks | About 1 in 3 (most common: the, in, and, of, was, to) |
| Letters shown | Almost always the first half of the word (the smaller half for odd lengths) |
| Sentences with no blanks | The first and the last (the last sentence in all 40) |
(Count: testpracticelab checked all 40 Read and Complete questions in the official Sample Questions booklet and matched each of the roughly 500 blanks to the answer key.)
Three things stand out in that table.
A third of the blanks need no vocabulary at all
Blanks like t_ _, i_ and a_ _ are the, in and and. Students rarely get stuck on these. They run out of time on the hard blanks and never reach the easy ones.
t__ i_ a__ o_ w__
the, in, and, of, was: fill these on sight
The empty boxes tell you the word length
Since you see the first half, three visible letters mean a six- or seven-letter word. When a candidate comes to mind, check the letter count first.
sig____ → 3 + 4 = 7 → signals
3 letters shown + 4 empty boxes = a 7-letter word
The first and last sentences are free context
They have no blanks, so read them first to get the topic.
Solve it in 3 passes (splitting the 3 minutes)
- Pass 1, 20 seconds: read only the first and last sentences and get the topic.
- Pass 2, 60 seconds: go through from the top and fill only the short blanks (function words, 3 to 4 letter words). If one stops you, move on.
- Pass 3, 80 seconds: work out the remaining content words from context.
- Last 20 seconds: check spelling. If any blank is still empty, type the most likely word that fits the letters shown.
Solving one passage
This is set 003 from our free practice sets. Let's follow the clue that settles each blank. The wavy underline marks the clue.
Many now provide free ac____ to computers
access · provide ... access to is a fixed pair. The to after the blank gives it away.
lend out tools or musical inst_______
instruments · Things on either side of or are the same kind. A plural noun alongside tools.
careful management of a limited bu____ ... which programs deserve the most funding
budget · A noun after an adjective. The word funding in the next sentence confirms we are talking about money.
adding e-books and streaming services alongside their phy_____ collections
physical · Printed books, in contrast with e-books.
removed memb______ fees, hoping ... more residents to sign up
membership · The clue (sign up) comes after the blank. Stop reading at the blank and you miss it.
how well it can stay rel_____ to the people it serves
relevant · relevant to is another pair worth learning as one unit.
The same logic holds at higher levels. Here are two blanks from hard set 013.
until prices have already ri___ significantly
risen · After have, so a past participle.
avoid the kind of sudden sh____ that can destabilize an entire economy
shocks · Sudden events that shake a whole economy.
Points lost to spelling
Knowing the word is not enough if you misspell it. Below, access was typed as acess, and one box is left over. When the letters you typed do not match the number of boxes, check your spelling.
acess
One c missing, so one box is left over
access
ac + cess fills the boxes exactly
The test uses US spelling: color, not colour; center, not centre.
What our practice sets train
To be upfront: we counted our own 14 Read & Complete sets (140 blanks), and they differ from the real test in a few ways.
| Item | Real test (40 official samples) | testpracticelab, 14 sets |
|---|---|---|
| Passage length | 64 words on average | 96 to 172 words |
| Blanks | About 12 on average | 10 |
| Function-word blanks | About 1 in 3 | None (all 140 are content words) |
| Letters shown | First half | Drops from 50% (easy) to 30% (hard) |
| Time limit | 3 minutes | 2:30 (easy) to 3:40 (hard) |
Our sets focus on solving content-word blanks from context, which is where most of your time goes on the real test. For the quick sweep of function-word blanks, practice with the official samples and the official practice test as well.
Wrapping up
Read & Complete rewards the person who splits 3 minutes well more than the person who knows the most words. Get the topic from the first and last sentences, fill the short blanks first, then find clues for the rest in the sentences around them.
Start practicing like it's the real test. testpracticelab has free Read & Complete practice sets at every level. Start with set 003, the one we solved above, and time yourself. For the one-sentence version of this task, see how to solve Fill in the Blank.