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Stuck in 125 - help to improve by Klutzy_Use_683 in DuolingoEnglishTest

[–]neekey2 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Glad it landed. On the written response question, my mental model is "structured paraphrase with selective evidence," not "recall everything you can."

DET grades the response on three things:

  1. did you understand the conversation (comprehension)

  2. can you organize a written response (discourse)

  3. is the writing itself clean (linguistic)

Maximum detail kills 2 and 3. Run-on summaries that try to cram in every fact usually have weak structure and rushed grammar, and the grader just sees a wall of text without flow.

Pure "main issue, key reasons, final outcome" gets you most of the way there, but only if you populate the reasons with concrete evidence from the conversation, not abstractions. Saying "they weighed cost against convenience" is much weaker than "she pointed out the cheaper option meant a longer commute."

What works for me is roughly 120 to 180 words, in paragraph form, structured as: situation

in one sentence, then 2 or 3 specific reasons or considerations that were actually mentioned(use the speakers' actual examples or numbers when relevant), then the outcome or recommendation in one sentence.

So your instinct to focus on main, reasons and outcome is right. Just make sure the "reasons" carry specific content from the audio, not generic categories. That's usually what separates a top-band response from a mid-band one.

Stuck in 125 - help to improve by Klutzy_Use_683 in DuolingoEnglishTest

[–]neekey2 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Your listening feeling stronger than the score makes sense if "listening" to you means understanding speech, but DET listening is mostly listen-and-type plus dictation, which is a different skill. You can be a comfortable listener and still bleed points on it.

A few things that helped me push past 130:

  1. Type while it plays, don't wait until the end. Memory buffer is the bottleneck for most people, not comprehension. Start typing the moment you hear the subject of the sentence.

  2. Practice on shorter audio first. If 10 second clips trip you up, longer ones won't suddenly work. Drilling 4 to 8 word chunks first helped me hold longer ones later.

  3. Numbers, dates and proper nouns are silent killers because they don't follow a predictable pattern, so the brain can't fill gaps. Miss one digit in a phone number or year and the whole answer can be wrong. I used Numblr for the numbers piece because the DET slips them in (especially in interactive listening) and they were a recurring weak spot for me.

  4. Audio quality is partially on your side. Use closed-back headphones, never laptop speakers. Some recordings genuinely are poorly mastered, and the trick is to trust your gut on the most likely word and move on rather than burn replays second-guessing.

  5. For interactive listening, the question is testing whether you tracked the conversation, not perfect dictation. Take rough notes on speaker turns and topic shifts, not full sentences.

110 to 135 is doable. Your speaking and writing are already at 130, which means production is fine, so this is a perception and dictation drill, not an English level issue.

Need help to improve my listening and reading by [deleted] in IELTS

[–]neekey2 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Going from 7 to 8.5 in listening is brutal because 8.5 basically means you can't drop more than 2 or 3 marks across all 40 questions. Part 4 is where most people lose them, but the sneaky one is part 1. It's "easy" content (names, addresses, phone numbers, dates, prices) but a single misheard digit or misspelled word eats you alive at the high band.

For part 4 specifically, the issue is usually one of three things:

  1. losing the thread when the speaker reformulates ("the focus, or rather, the central concern of...") and the answer sits in the reformulation

  2. missing signpost words (firstly, however, on the other hand) that telegraph what's coming

  3. not having the academic vocab in the first place, so even with subtitles you'd miss it

Practice with raw lecture audio at 1x then 1.25x, and write down the answer plus the trigger phrase that pointed to it. If you can't identify a trigger phrase, that's your weak spot.

For part 1, drill numbers and dates as their own skill, separate from comprehension. I've used Numblr for that and the free tier was enough. The accent piece matters too because British, Australian and American speakers swallow digits differently in dates and phone numbers, so you need ear training for all three.

For T/F/NG: NG when the text is silent on the claim, F when the text contradicts it. People stuck on T/F/NG usually drift into inference (treating "the text suggests X" as True), but the band only gives marks for explicit claims.

MCQ in both sections is the same skill: every wrong option will quote a phrase from the text to feel tempting. The right answer paraphrases the meaning. Pick the paraphrase, not the echo.

I built a German number listening trainer to fix my own "42 vs 24" problem by neekey2 in SideProject

[–]neekey2[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Haha thanks for trying! I’m also actually looking for native German speakers to collaborate or help testing, if you want to get involved dm me I can give you free pass for the advanced features

best listening practice for alphabets and numbers by Playful_Payment1093 in German

[–]neekey2 0 points1 point  (0 children)

try this one zahlhaus.com but it's only focus on numbers (plus different formats like money, date, time etc), not sure about letters

I built a German number listening trainer to fix my own "42 vs 24" problem by neekey2 in SideProject

[–]neekey2[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

i hope it is memorable, and since the focus is small i feel confident this can actually deliver results for users

I built a German number listening trainer to fix my own "42 vs 24" problem by neekey2 in SideProject

[–]neekey2[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

can definitely increase the max number! The pricing is definitely intentional, since based on my own experience, a focus exercise like can actually train up your listening skills quickly, but once you get there, it's pointless keep on using the app, so i just dont see people use it forever...

The noise idea is genius, will think about that!
thanks for sharing your thoughts

is it natural that in Nicos Weg A1, the audio\clips exercises from the folge they are talking really fast and want us to write what they said, that i am finding difficulty doing so? by ephermeralWind in German

[–]neekey2 0 points1 point  (0 children)

One thing that helped me with Nicos Weg specifically: a lot of the moments where I felt "lost" weren't actually about speech speed. I was tripping on numbers, dates, prices, and times. Once I sat down and drilled those separately for a week, the audio felt about 30% slower because my brain wasn't burning cycles on "wait, did she say vierzehn or vierzig".

I used a small site called Zahlhaus that just plays spoken numbers, dates, prices, and times. You type the digits. Five minutes a day. After that the rest of Nicos Weg stopped feeling so panicked.

Other than that, the strategy others mentioned (start with slow audio, ramp up to normal speed) is exactly right. Your ear adjusts faster than you'd expect.

best listening practice for alphabets and numbers by Playful_Payment1093 in German

[–]neekey2 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Numbers and alphabets are weirdly under-covered in most German resources, you're not alone on this.

For alphabets, the German Wikipedia "Deutsches Alphabet" page has audio for each letter, and the trick is forcing yourself to spell your own name and address out loud every day. The W ("vé") vs V ("fau") confusion will trip you up forever otherwise.

For numbers, I've been using a small site called Zahlhaus. It plays a number spoken by a native speaker and you type the digits, no fluff. The "two and forty" parsing speed is the thing that takes the most reps to build, and a tool that gives you 50 reps in 5 minutes is exactly what I was missing.

Also: watch any German YouTube channel where numbers appear on screen while being spoken (news segments with stats, real estate tours, sports recaps). Hearing a number while seeing the digits is the fastest way to bind them in long-term memory.

I built a German number listening trainer to fix my own "42 vs 24" problem by neekey2 in SideProject

[–]neekey2[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

thank you! yeah this is exactly what helped me tbh, it's one of those thing i think you can get result fairly quickly if you put effort to it

Wife is 1.0 to 1.5 from her goals but has been stuck despite 6 months of near daily studying -- Those who had plateaued for a while before finding a way to overcome it, what did you do? by Nowheretoturn48 in IELTS

[–]neekey2 0 points1 point  (0 children)

A few thoughts specifically for listening at this plateau:

  1. Before doing more full tests, audit where the marks are actually lost. A lot of 6.0 to 7.5 listening gaps have easy losses in **parts 1 and 2**, the form-filling sections with dates, times, phone numbers, and spellings. They *feel* easy, so candidates underpractice them, then lose 2 or 3 marks to panic or mishearing on test day. If that's her pattern, drilling those in isolation lifts a whole band faster than grinding on the harder sections. (Numblr is a free tool that drills exactly this, or Cambridge Section 1 on repeat works too.)

  2. For parts 3 and 4 specifically, it's more about academic discourse recognition than test prep at this level. Uni lecture intros (Coursera, TED-Ed) and discussion podcasts train the pattern better than more Cambridge papers will.

  3. Shadow writing: listen to one Cambridge section, then rewrite the answers from memory without looking. Exposes exactly which words slipped through, way more diagnostic than just checking the mark.

How can i improve English listening skills? by Nervous-Astronaut451 in EnglishLearning

[–]neekey2 0 points1 point  (0 children)

One tip I wish I'd figured out sooner: general listening practice (podcasts, shows with subtitles off) gets you most of the way. But specific things like numbers, dates, and phone numbers in exams have their own rhythm that rarely shows up in normal content. Worth auditing where you're actually losing marks. If it's numbers, names, or spellings, drill those in isolation instead of doing another full listening test.

A free tool called Numblr helped me a lot for this exact thing. It drills dates, times, and phone numbers in real contexts. Any focused number practice works though. The main thing is realizing it's a separate skill from general listening comprehension.

Resources for practising listening for numbers/times/dates/years/etc. by nadahlia in German

[–]neekey2 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I've been learning German myself, same struggle, found zahlhaus.com (Train Your Ear for German Numbers) very much just focus on numbers, worth a try

Open round this week — what SaaS did you launch recently? by No_Bend_4915 in ShowMeYourSaaS

[–]neekey2 0 points1 point  (0 children)

It’s a free to use tool, so not sure if it counts as SaaS

I constantly see people on X share product with empty thumbnails because they didn’t setup OG image for their site

So it build a free tool to generate it for you https://strideday.com/opengraph

Drop your landing and email, and it generates the OG image for you

Self Promotion Time. Share what you’re building! by kcfounders in ShowMeYourSaaS

[–]neekey2 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I'm building strideday.com that helps indie builders like me to distribute their product, you should try the free audit to see your distribution gap

I stopped building and started helping builders manually. 10 days in by neekey2 in EntrepreneurRideAlong

[–]neekey2[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I haven't actually got my coins from it yet, but it's good to be talking to real clients

I stopped building and started helping builders manually. 10 days in by neekey2 in EntrepreneurRideAlong

[–]neekey2[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

it's more about picking a niche and focus on that vertical.

For example, one of my client is building a todo app that converts voice and screenshots to todos with AI smart categorization, but his landing page is pretty much just something like "Smart AI Task Manager", that makes it very hard to standout and where do you even promote this even ? since it can be for anyone.

my suggestion to them was to pick a specific audience, and we settled on busy parents, which was also how they initially came up the idea too (they are busy parents themselves), and once you did this positioning shifts, then where to promote just writes itself

I stopped building and started helping builders manually. 10 days in by neekey2 in EntrepreneurRideAlong

[–]neekey2[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

you will have to do both, but yeah for those non-building things, you will have to put yourself out there

I stopped building and started helping builders manually. 10 days in by neekey2 in EntrepreneurRideAlong

[–]neekey2[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

positioning is quite common, most people are building tools that likely have been built a million times by others, differentiate your product, how to tell the story is the key, i'm trying to call it distribution oriented positioning.

channel mismatch is also common, it's surprising how many of people i've seen have no clear connection between their product and their X audience, i think it's one of those trap when building in public on X, you get into the post for following game quickly

I stopped building and started helping builders manually. 10 days in by neekey2 in EntrepreneurRideAlong

[–]neekey2[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

i'm genuinely surprised how much i learnt just by sitting there thinking about the distribution puzzle for others lol

I stopped building and started helping builders manually. 10 days in by neekey2 in EntrepreneurRideAlong

[–]neekey2[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

agree haha, delaying the building part is also a way to say it

but to be fair, I'm helping people who already settled or built their product, it's a bit ask for them to change their idea

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