Over the years, Duolingo has taught English to millions of learners, from over 20 first languages. But we also believe that teaching (and even assessing) English in a human-centered way can be truly empowering, and that's what we aim to do with the Duolingo English Test. We believe it's important to acknowledge that the privileged status of English is intertwined with a long history of imperialism and injustice. English opens doorsĪll over the world, English proficiency serves as a key to unlock opportunity: as the de facto lingua franca or “common language” used in business, government, and education in many parts of the world, English can open doors that would otherwise remain closed. Today, the Duolingo English Test is accepted by over 3,000 universities and programs and has been taken by hundreds of thousands of people in over 207 countries and territories-but it didn’t start out that way! Read on to learn how we went from a hackathon (a collaborative event where employees across all areas of the company work together to develop brand-new ideas and passion projects) to the world’s most accessible English proficiency exam. In this five part series, we take a look back at the enormous amount of research and development that went into reinventing the world of high-stakes testing. Five years ago, we launched the first high-stakes, digital-first test that could be taken anytime and anywhere in the world, because we saw how technology could radically improve testing for students and institutions.

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