What's up everybody? It's Caroline here from the DET team with tips to help you test your best. This week, I'm not in the studio, and I'm not using a professional camera set up to shoot this video I'm in the office, and I've got my own laptop here and the reason for that is because I want to do a super simple demonstration for you all about how to stay in frame and how to maintain eye contact during the Duolingo English Test.
So this was inspired by a couple of conversations that I've been having with our proctoring team about common mistakes that test takers might make or just simple things that you might not think about when taking a test from home. So let's first talk about what I mean when I say "stay in the frame. " So the frame refers to what you see here, which is your camera's recording of what you look like.
And that is going to be watched by multiple human proctors for each Duolingo English Test. So again, remember that multiple people are watching your entire test recording. So here's a few super simple tips for the set up that makes it easier for them to ensure you're not breaking any rules.
One is that you want to stay centered in the frame. So as you can see I'm sitting here in the middle of the frame I'm not too far to either side and I don't have my camera tilted far up and I don't have it tilted far down. I'm exactly here in the center and as you can see, my camera is right here, and it is at eye level.
So you'll be able to see your own set up in the corner of your screen where there's a little thumbnail of your recording and you want to make sure you look centered in the frame. If you're too far to the side or too far up or down that can increase the probability that you might go out of frame during the test. And that's a problem because we need to see your face, your eyes, and your ears throughout the entirety of the test.
So, speaking of your ears, if you have long hair like I do make sure you either put it behind your ears, so that they're uncovered or you can have it up, like I have it right now That helps me when I'm in a situation like this to not be distracted by my hair. One exception for this is if you wear a religious head covering that covers your ears that is permitted, and I'll put a link with more information about that in the description box below. So to review, we're centered in the frame.
Our eyes, our ears, and our whole face and head are visible and also finally just make sure you are well lit. So what I mean by that is if you have a light source in your room you want to try to put it in front of you. So that would be behind your laptop.
Mine is actually up here. That helps to put the light on your face and not behind your face. If a light source is coming from behind your face and you don't have enough in front sometimes your face is too shadowy for proctors to ensure that you're following all the rules of the Duolingo English Test.
So super simple set up. Centered, everything's visible, and brightly lit. And then try not to move the camera or yourself around too much during the test.
I do think it's natural to kind of like shift in your seat. Or you might want to come in and look at something more closely on the screen maybe if you're describing an image. That's fine, that's natural.
Just try not to move out of the frame, or bump your camera and mess up this perfect framing job that you've done. So those are the basics. Then I wanted to talk a little bit about this eye contact rule that is commonly asked about in my YouTube comments and also elsewhere on social media, and also in our support chats.
This is the rule that you need to maintain eye contact with the test. And the reason we have this rule is because we want to make sure that you're not looking at any external resources. So, reminder that you are not allowed to use notes for the DET, you are not allowed to use your cell phone, a text book any external resource to help you with your English It all needs to come from in here.
So the way that we need to ensure that is to make sure that you have eye contact with the screen or the camera throughout the vast majority of the test. Now, that said, there may be some moments where you might find yourself glancing away in thought or looking down to type and our proctors are trained to recognize those natural glances away or down. If you find yourself doing that, I always try to tell people to return to the center, look at the screen For example, if you've been looking down to type a lot, you might want to look back up, check your work that's a great writing tip and test taking tip to make sure that you haven't made any errors and to build on the thoughts that you've already made.
Our proctors are trained to understand that there are natural glances like that. Now what they're looking for is unnatural or suspicious glances that might indiciate you're using some external resource in your testing space. So a couple of things to keep in mind here One, again, multiple humans are looking at your test and they are trained on these glances and what is natural so if you do need to look down to type occasionally, that's ok And two, remember that there are lots of different types of tasks on the Duolingo English Test, and a lot of them don't require extended typing at all.
In fact there's a lot of speaking questions, like I'm doing right now, so I'm just sitting here looking at myself in the screen and maintaining eye contact with myself. And there are also a lot where you're going to be using your mouse to select words, or to highlight an answer or select a dropdown answer So those questions should be pretty easy for you to maintain eye contact with the test, because what you need to be speaking or selecting is right there on the screen Ok so those are a couple of simple tips and tricks that I learned from our proctors recently I hope they were helpful for you. Let me know if you have other questions in the comments down below and also let me know if you like this more chatty, kind of unscripted style of video and if there's another topic you want me to talk about using my laptop.
Happy to record another video like this. And best of luck on the test if you're about to take it. I believe in you!
And we'll see you in the next one test takers. Bye!
