Exam English

DET Read and Select Practice: Real-or-Nonword Decisions

Published Updated 3 min read Editorial standards

Duolingo English Test Read and Select vocabulary practice asks one narrow question: is the displayed form a real English word? Duolingo's current instructions present one form at a time and warn that some nonwords can resemble genuine words. This original practice set does not reproduce live items or claim to predict your test.

Choose YES or NO before checking each key. Knowing the meaning is stronger evidence than recognizing a familiar shape. This page is the exercise-bank companion to Lyra Practice's Read and Select recognition guide: the guide explains the decision, while this page supplies 52 new real-or-nonword checks. Continue with the Duolingo English Test vocabulary hub.

Set 1: common spelling traps

  1. separate
  2. definate
  3. necessary
  4. occurence
  5. environment
  6. maintainance
  7. relevant
  8. accomodate

Answers: 1 YES. 2 NO—definite. 3 YES. 4 NO—occurrence. 5 YES. 6 NO—maintenance. 7 YES. 8 NO—accommodate. A false form may be pronounceable and still be misspelled.

Set 2: word families

  1. reliability
  2. reliablity
  3. substantial
  4. substancial
  5. interpretation
  6. interpretasion
  7. accessible
  8. accessable

Answers: 1 YES, the noun from reliable. 2 NO; reliability needs the second i. 3 YES. 4 NO; the family keeps the -tial spelling. 5 YES. 6 NO; the noun is spelled interpretation. 7 YES. 8 NO; the suffix is -ible in accessible.

Set 3: prefixes do not guarantee a word

  1. unpredictable
  2. impossable
  3. misinterpret
  4. misunderstending
  5. inconsistent
  6. inregular
  7. reconsider
  8. redecideful

Answers: 1 YES. 2 NO—the word is spelled impossible. 3 YES. 4 NO—the noun is spelled misunderstanding. 5 YES. 6 NO—irregular. 7 YES. 8 NO. Real-looking pieces do not make every combination an established word.

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Set 4: less frequent real words

  1. negligible
  2. provisional
  3. prevalent
  4. ambiguous
  5. mitigate
  6. plausable
  7. compatability
  8. persistant

Answers: 1–5 YES. Negligible means too small to matter; provisional means operating for now; prevalent means widespread; ambiguous permits more than one interpretation; mitigate means reduce severity. 6 NO—plausible. 7 NO—compatibility. 8 NO—persistent.

Set 5: inflected forms

  1. occurred
  2. transfered
  3. beginning
  4. prefering
  5. studies
  6. analysises
  7. admitted
  8. benefited

Answers: 1 YES; the final consonant doubles. 2 NO—transferred. 3 YES. 4 NO—preferring. 5 YES. 6 NO—the plural is analyses. 7 YES. 8 YES; benefited is the standard American spelling used here. Read and Select tests real English, so make the decision from an established form rather than from appearance alone.

Set 6: mixed sprint

Give yourself one decision per line:

constraint — constraent — feasible — feasable — hypothesis — hypothesment — widespread — widespred — cautious — cautionary — evidential — evidance

Key: YES, NO, YES, NO, YES, NO, YES, NO, YES, YES, YES, NO.

  • Constraint is a limit; constraent is a misspelling, not a word.
  • Feasible means practical or possible; feasable is misspelled.
  • Hypothesis is a proposed explanation; hypothesment is not a word.
  • Widespread is one word with -spread intact.
  • Cautious, cautionary, and evidential are genuine forms with different meanings.
  • Evidence is the correct spelling, not evidance.

Review method

For every false form you selected, write only the correct form in a meaningful phrase: a feasible proposal, persistent delays, interpret the evidence. Do not repeatedly copy the nonword. For every unfamiliar real word, learn its meaning and one family member. Recognition becomes more reliable when spelling, morphology, and use point to the same form.

Continue in Lyra Practice with Read and Select word families and lookalikes, then return to the DET vocabulary hub for another recognition task.

Sources

The Duolingo English Test is a trademark of Duolingo. Lyra Practice is not affiliated with or endorsed by Duolingo.

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