How to practice: This set collects only the Read, Then Speak question type from the real DET (Duolingo English Test), covering DET Speaking questions. No grading and no timer, so solve it yourself, then tap each question to reveal the answer or model response.
Q1
Explain whether you believe individuals have a moral duty to disobey laws they consider fundamentally unjust.
- When might breaking a law be justified?
- Can you give a historical example?
- What risks do civil dissenters face?
- How should society handle such disobedience?
20s to prepare · 1:30 to speak · 1 take only
Useful Expressions
I believe breaking a law can be justified when... · A historical example that comes to mind is... · Civil dissenters typically face... · Society should respond by... · Ultimately, I believe...
Show Model Response
I believe breaking a law can be morally justified when that law causes genuine, serious harm to a group of people and there's no realistic democratic mechanism available to change it quickly enough to prevent ongoing suffering, particularly when the law itself violates basic human dignity or fundamental rights.
A historical example that comes to mind is the civil rights movement in the United States, where activists deliberately violated segregation laws through peaceful civil disobedience, sit-ins, and public demonstrations, even though doing so meant risking arrest, violence, and social condemnation, because they judged those unjust laws to be fundamentally illegitimate and worth challenging directly.
Civil dissenters in situations like that typically face substantial risks, including imprisonment, violence, social ostracism, and sometimes lasting damage to their careers or personal safety, which is precisely why genuine civil disobedience usually requires deep moral conviction rather than casual defiance for its own sake.
I think society should respond to principled civil disobedience with a degree of nuance rather than simply treating all lawbreaking identically. Legal systems can still maintain consequences for breaking the law, since accountability matters, but public discourse and eventually historical judgment should distinguish clearly between disobedience aimed at exposing genuine injustice and lawbreaking that's simply self-interested or genuinely harmful to others.
Ultimately, I believe moral duty can sometimes outweigh legal obligation, but only under fairly demanding conditions, meaning the injustice must be severe, the harm must be clear, and peaceful legal alternatives must have already been reasonably exhausted first.
A historical example that comes to mind is the civil rights movement in the United States, where activists deliberately violated segregation laws through peaceful civil disobedience, sit-ins, and public demonstrations, even though doing so meant risking arrest, violence, and social condemnation, because they judged those unjust laws to be fundamentally illegitimate and worth challenging directly.
Civil dissenters in situations like that typically face substantial risks, including imprisonment, violence, social ostracism, and sometimes lasting damage to their careers or personal safety, which is precisely why genuine civil disobedience usually requires deep moral conviction rather than casual defiance for its own sake.
I think society should respond to principled civil disobedience with a degree of nuance rather than simply treating all lawbreaking identically. Legal systems can still maintain consequences for breaking the law, since accountability matters, but public discourse and eventually historical judgment should distinguish clearly between disobedience aimed at exposing genuine injustice and lawbreaking that's simply self-interested or genuinely harmful to others.
Ultimately, I believe moral duty can sometimes outweigh legal obligation, but only under fairly demanding conditions, meaning the injustice must be severe, the harm must be clear, and peaceful legal alternatives must have already been reasonably exhausted first.