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DLPT Chinese listening practice test
Twenty DLPT5-style questions from ILR 1 to 3, timed at the exam’s pace. Your ILR level at the end, and every passage in English.
20 questions · 1 hour
- ILR 1 signs, notes and notices
- ILR 1+ short news and messages
- ILR 2 factual reports
- ILR 2+ reports with opinion
- ILR 3 commentary and argument
What is the DLPT?
The Defense Language Proficiency Test (DLPT5) is the US Department of Defense test of how well you read and understand a foreign language. Mandarin has a Reading and a Listening test, each scored on the Interagency Language Roundtable (ILR) scale. Military linguists take it every year, and the score sets Foreign Language Proficiency Pay.
What is on this practice test?
Twenty questions in the lower range’s format: a passage in Chinese, a question in English and four choices, four questions at each of ILR 1, 1+, 2, 2+ and 3. The clock gives you the exam’s pace, 3 minutes a question (an hour in all). Passages are drawn from a bank of 30 for Reading and 30 for Listening, so each try is different.
How is it scored?
You are rated at the highest level where you got at least three of four right, with every level below it held too. Below that it is 0+. The real DLPT scores with item statistics we don’t have, so read this as an estimate of your level, not a prediction of your score.
How does Listening work?
Each passage plays in your device’s Mandarin voice, a second voice for the other speaker in a conversation, and you may play it twice, as the lower-range exam does. Chrome, Edge and Safari have Mandarin voices.
Is this the official DLPT?
No. Every passage here is our own, written in the styles the exam uses: signs and notes at level 1, news and announcements at 1+ and 2, reports with opinion at 2+, commentary and argument at 3. People, places and events in them are invented. Not affiliated with the Defense Language Institute or the Department of Defense.