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Duolingo English Test (DET) Listening Skills Flashcards
51 question-and-answer cards covering Listening Skills as it is examined in Duolingo English Test (DET). 24 of them are printed below, taken from across the deck — no signup, no paywall on the preview.
24 sample cards from the Listening Skills deck
Sampled from the end of the deck, so these are different cards from the ones shown on the syllabus page.
What should a good conversation summary include and exclude?
Include the main idea, key points, and resolution; exclude trivial details, verbatim quoting, and personal opinions.
Which is more important in a conversation summary: every detail or the gist plus key points?
The gist plus key points—accurate main ideas and outcomes, written clearly in your own words.
What is "connected speech"?
The way words run together in natural fluent speech rather than being pronounced as isolated, clearly separated words.
What is linking (catenation) in connected speech?
When a word ending in a consonant joins a following word beginning with a vowel, e.g., "an apple" sounds like "a-napple".
What is elision in connected speech?
The dropping of a sound, often a /t/ or /d/, e.g., "next day" → "nexday".
What is assimilation in connected speech?
When a sound changes to become more like a neighboring sound, e.g., "ten boys" → "tem boys".
What is a contraction's effect on listening (e.g., "I would" → "I'd")?
Reduced/blended forms can be easily missed; recognizing them prevents transcription errors and meaning loss.
What are "weak forms" in connected speech?
Function words (to, of, and, for) pronounced with a reduced schwa /ə/ when unstressed, e.g., "cup of" → "cuppa".
What is the schwa /ə/ and why does it matter for listening?
The neutral unstressed vowel, the most common English sound; recognizing it helps decode reduced syllables and weak forms.
What is word stress?
The emphasis placed on a particular syllable within a word, making it louder, longer, and higher in pitch.
How can word stress change meaning? Give an example.
Stress can mark word class: REcord (noun) vs reCORD (verb); PREsent (noun) vs preSENT (verb).
What is sentence stress (rhythm) in English?
Content words (nouns, main verbs, adjectives, adverbs) are stressed while function words are unstressed, creating English's stress-timed rhythm.
What does it mean that English is "stress-timed"?
Stressed syllables occur at roughly regular intervals, and unstressed syllables compress between them, affecting how speech sounds.
What is intonation?
The rise and fall of pitch across an utterance, which signals meaning, attitude, and sentence type.
What does rising intonation at the end of an utterance often signal?
A yes/no question, uncertainty, or an invitation to continue.
What does falling intonation at the end of an utterance often signal?
A statement, a command, or completion/finality (also typical of wh-questions).
How can intonation help you choose a dialogue response?
It reveals the speaker's intent or emotion (question, surprise, sarcasm), guiding which reply is appropriate.
What is the difference between main idea and supporting detail in listening?
The main idea is the central point or overall message; supporting details are specific facts, examples, or reasons that back it up.
What clues signal the main idea in spoken passages?
Topic statements, repetition, emphasis/stress, and summary phrases like "the key point is" or "overall."
What signposting words introduce supporting details?
"For example," "such as," "because," "in addition," and "specifically."
Why is distinguishing main idea from detail useful for the summary task?
It lets you prioritize central points in your summary and avoid getting lost in minor details.
What is a strategy for accurately catching numbers, dates, and names by ear?
Note them immediately as you hear them (digits/abbreviations), since they carry no contextual redundancy to reconstruct later.
Why are years like "nineteen ninety-five" tricky in listening?
English often reads years in two-digit pairs (19-95), not as "one thousand nine hundred...", so you must map the spoken pattern to digits quickly.
How can spelled-out names be captured accurately in listening tasks?
By tracking the letters one by one as spoken (often using the alphabet/spelling), since names can't be guessed from context.
What this deck covers
The Listening Skills deck follows the Duolingo English Test (DET) Listening Skills syllabus — 4 chapters and 13 topics — so questions land on material that is genuinely examinable rather than trivia around it. That works out to roughly 12.8 cards per chapter.
Answers are written to be recallable, not just readable — averaging about 107 characters, which is long enough to carry the reasoning and short enough to say out loud.
A deck like this earns its keep on the second and third pass. Read the syllabus first so you know the shape of the subject, then use the cards to find the specific facts that have not stuck.
Listening Skills flashcards FAQ
How many Listening Skills flashcards are in this Duolingo English Test (DET) deck?
51 cards. This page previews 24 of them, sampled evenly across the deck so you can judge the difficulty before installing anything.
Are these Duolingo English Test (DET) flashcards free?
Yes. The preview here is free to read with no signup, and the full 51-card deck is free inside the Examius app.
What do the Listening Skills cards cover?
They follow the Duolingo English Test (DET) Listening Skills syllabus — 4 chapters and 13 topics — so the questions track what is actually examinable.
How should I use these flashcards?
Read the syllabus first so you know the shape of the subject, then drill the deck. Examius schedules each card with spaced repetition, so cards you keep missing come back sooner and ones you know drift further apart.