Guides written from the scoring side.
How each exam is scored, where the marks go, and what to practise. Written by the team that builds Hilingo’s engine.
Page 2 of 6 · 65 guides
CELPIP Writing Task 1: what the rater is actually marking
Sample answers show you a finished email. They do not show you why it scored, which is the only part you can reuse. Task 1 is scored on four dimensions, and register leaks into three of them — which is why writing to a landlord the way you would write to a friend is a content failure, not a style preference.
CELPIP Writing Task 2: the survey wants a choice, not a balanced essay
Task 2 looks like an opinion essay, so candidates write one — they weigh both options fairly, conclude that each has merit, and lose marks for it. The prompt is a survey with two options and it is asking you to pick one. Balance is not sophistication here; it is a failure to answer.
DET vs TOEFL: one of them shows the university your actual English
Both are accepted almost everywhere, so acceptance is not the deciding question. The one difference that should decide it is barely written about — the Duolingo English Test sends the institution a recording of your speaking and your written sample alongside your score, and TOEFL does not work that way.
Duolingo describe the image: what the scorer compares your answer to
Every guide to the Duolingo photo tasks gives you a four-part template and a pile of sample answers. None of them explain what the machine does with your words — which is why a short or generic response does not merely score lower, it collapses three marks at once.
Duolingo Speak About the Photo: silence is the most expensive thing you can say
You get 20 seconds to look and up to 90 seconds to talk, and the whole thing is scored by machine. That single fact changes what a good answer is — because a scorer with no audio has nothing to assess, and a brilliant observation delivered in fragments is worth less than a plain sentence that keeps going.
Free PTE mock test with results: what a result has to contain
Every platform offering a free PTE mock promises "instant results". Pearson publishes the traits each task is actually scored on, and most free results throw every one of them away — which is how you end up with a number and no idea what to do on Monday.
How accurate is your PTE mock score? Audit the output, not the claim
Every platform says its scoring is accurate and none of them shows the working, which makes the claim impossible to check from outside. The result screen is a different matter. Six things to look for on any PTE mock, including ours.
IELTS Academic vs General Training: the same reading score is not the same band
Every comparison lists the surface differences and stops — a graph in Academic Task 1, a letter in General Training. The two things that actually cost people money are further down: the two papers do not convert raw reading answers to bands the same way, and they are not accepted for the same things.
IELTS for UKVI: the practice is identical, the booking is not
IELTS for UKVI has the same questions, format and marking as standard IELTS — so there is no such thing as UKVI-specific practice material. What differs is the booking, and booking the wrong one is what costs people a fee and six weeks.
IELTS General Reading: you do not have a band target, you have an error budget
General Training Reading is marked far more harshly than Academic in raw terms — band 6.0 needs 30 correct against Academic's 23, and band 9.0 needs all forty. Once you know how many wrong answers you can afford, the whole strategy changes.
The last week before your IELTS: what actually moves your band
In the final week you cannot learn much new English, but you can stop losing marks you are already losing. From the scoring side, most late band loss comes from a handful of avoidable things — and almost none of them are vocabulary.
IELTS Listening format: the recording plays once, but the questions do not
Every format page tells you there are four parts, forty questions and one play. All of that is true and none of it changes what you do in the room. The thing that does is sitting in front of you the whole time — the question paper, which you are allowed to read before you hear anything.