Read and complete is the Duolingo English Test task where a short passage appears with letters stripped out of several words and you type the rest. It looks like a spelling test, but it is really a reading test: the sentence around the gap tells you which word is meant, and the letters only confirm it.
Spend the first ten seconds reading straight through, gaps and all. The topic of the passage narrows the possible words far more than the letters do, and a word you cannot get in sentence two is often obvious once you have read sentence four.
Look at what sits immediately before and after the gap. An article before it means a noun is coming; ‘to’ before it usually means an infinitive; ‘is’ or ‘was’ often signals an adjective or a participle. Decide the shape of the word before you hunt for the word itself.
Given ‘rel—’, run through relate, release, reliable, relevant, relinquish. Matching one of those to the meaning you already have from the passage is faster than trying to invent a word letter by letter.
Function words and short words are usually quick wins. Complete them all, reread the sentence with them in place, and the remaining long words often become readable from context alone.
Leave five seconds to scan for plural -s, past -ed and the third-person -s. A correct word with the wrong ending is marked wrong, and these are the errors most candidates make when rushing.
A comma after the gap often means a linking word is missing; a full stop close behind it usually means you need a noun that ends the clause. Punctuation narrows the options before you have read a single letter.
Moving between boxes with the keyboard rather than the mouse saves a surprising amount of time across a whole passage. Practise it until you never look down at your hands.
One impossible word is one mark. Ten seconds spent staring at it is two easy words further down the passage. Put in your best guess, move on, and come back only if the clock allows.
Take a paragraph of news in English, delete the second half of every fifth word and rebuild it the next day. Ten minutes of this daily for two weeks does more for this task than any amount of reading about it.
Not thisThe two reports were incon**sistant** with each other.
ThisThe two reports were inconsistent with each other.
The -ent / -ant endings are the single most common misspelling in this task. Learn the pairs you actually use: consistent, independent, different, relevant, important.
Not thisShe asked for a full **refuse**.
ThisShe asked for a full refund.
The letters matched, but the collocation did not. ‘A full refund’ is fixed; checking the words either side of the gap prevents this.
Not thisThe committee has not yet **respond** to the letter.
ThisThe committee has not yet responded to the letter.
‘Has not yet’ requires a past participle. Candidates find the right word and then ignore the grammar around it.
Not thisacc**o**modation
Thisaccommodation
Double letters disappear under time pressure. Accommodation, necessary, occurred and recommend are worth drilling before test day.
Not thisThe **evidences** show that the scheme worked.
ThisThe evidence shows that the scheme worked.
Evidence, research, information and advice are uncountable in English. Adding a plural -s to them is one of the most common B2 errors and it shows up here constantly.
Not thisRetyping the letters that are already on the screen.
ThisTyping only the letters that are missing.
The visible letters stay where they are, so repeating them produces a misspelling of a word you actually knew.
Not thisThe bridge was **raise** in 1908.
ThisThe bridge was raised in 1908.
After ‘was’ or ‘were’ you need a past participle. Candidates identify the verb correctly and then leave it in the base form.
40 original questions. The first 10 are open to everyone. Answers are checked in your browser and never sent to us, so you can share this page with a class as it is.
1Complete the word. Only the missing letters go in the box.
3Complete the word.
5Complete the word.
7Complete the word.
8Write the full word and name the clue you used: ‘The two accounts of the accident were incon______ with each other.’
One good answer
inconsistent — ‘with each other’ points to two things that do not match, and the stem ‘incon-’ plus that meaning gives inconsistent. Note the -ent ending.
10Complete the word.
12Complete the word.
14Complete the word.
16A passage reads: ‘Although the company promised a full ref___, the money never arrived.’ Write the word, then name one other word the letters allow that the sentence rules out.
One good answer
refund. ‘Reform’ and ‘refusal’ also begin ref-, but neither works after ‘promised a full’, and only money can ‘arrive’. The collocation decides it.
17Complete the word.
21Complete the word.
23Complete the word.
25Complete the word.
27Complete the word.
28Explain why ‘The evidences show that the scheme worked’ is wrong, and give the correct sentence.
One good answer
Evidence is uncountable in English, so it has no plural and takes a singular verb: ‘The evidence shows that the scheme worked.’ The same applies to research, information and advice.
30Complete the word.
32Complete the word.
34Complete the word.
36Describe a ten-minute daily exercise you could do at home that trains this task directly.
One good answer
Take a paragraph of English news, delete the second half of every fifth word, leave it overnight, then rebuild the words from the sentences around them and check the spelling against the original.
37Complete the word.
Note
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Yes. The task is marked on the exact letters you type, so a word that is right in meaning but wrong in spelling scores nothing. Drill double letters and -ent/-ant endings before test day.
Always. There is no penalty for a wrong guess, and a word that fits the grammar and the topic is often right. An empty gap can never score.
Roughly the first half, though it varies from word to word. Treat the visible letters as a check on a word you have already worked out from meaning, not as the starting point.
Within the same passage and while the timer is running, yes — that is why filling the easy gaps first works. Once you have submitted the passage and moved on, it is gone.
Double-letter words (accommodation, occurred, recommend, necessary), the -ent/-ant pairs (consistent, independent, relevant) and the uncountable nouns that tempt a plural (evidence, research, information, advice).
Make your own cloze: delete the second half of every fifth word in any English paragraph and rebuild it a day later. It trains exactly the same combination of reading, grammar and spelling.