A breakdown of the OET exam

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The OET (Occupational English Test) is an international English language test that assesses the language communication skills of healthcare professionals who seek to register and practise in an English-speaking environment.

 

The test is divided into 4 modules:

 

LISTENING – 45min

 

It is the same content for all healthcare professions. You’ll have to follow and understand a range of health-related spoken materials such as patient consultations and lectures.

 

READING – 60min

 

The Reading sub-test consists of three parts and a total of 42 question items. All three parts take a total of 60 minutes to complete. The topics are of generic healthcare interest and are therefore accessible to candidates across all professions.

 

Part A – expeditious reading task (15 minutes)

Part A assesses your ability to locate specific information from four short texts in a quick and efficient manner. The four short texts relate to a single healthcare topic, and you must answer 20 questions in the allocated time period. The 20 questions consist of matching, sentence completion and short answer questions.

 

Part B and Part C – careful reading tasks (45 minutes)

Part B assesses your ability to identify the detail, gist or main point of six short texts sourced from the healthcare workplace (100-150 words each). The texts might consist of extracts from policy documents, hospital guidelines, manuals or internal communications, such as emails or memos. For each text, there is one three-option multiple-choice question.

Part C assesses your ability to identify detailed meaning and opinion in two texts on topics of interest to healthcare professionals (800 words each). For each text, you must answer eight four-option multiple choice questions.

 

WRITING – 45min

 

The task is to write a letter, usually a referral letter. Some alternative letter types are a letter of transfer and a letter of discharge.

Along with the task instructions, you will receive stimulus material (case notes and/or other related documentation) which includes information to use in your response.

Your performance on the Writing sub-test is marked independently by a minimum of two trained Assessors.

Your performance is scored against six criteria and receives a band score for each criterion:

·        Purpose (Whether the purpose of the letter is immediately apparent to the reader and sufficiently expanded in the course of the letter)

·        Content (Whether all the necessary information is included and accurate for the reader)

·        Conciseness & Clarity (Whether unnecessary information is omitted so that the letter is an effective summary for the reader)

·        Genre & Style (Whether the register, tone and use of abbreviations are appropriate for the reader)

·        Organisation & Layout (Whether the letter is organised and well laid out for the reader)

·        Language (Whether the accuracy of the grammar, vocabulary, spelling and punctuation communicates the necessary information to the reader)

 

SPEAKING – 20min

In each Speaking test, your identity and profession are checked by the interlocutor and there is a short warm-up conversation about your professional background. Then the role-plays are introduced one by one and you have three minutes to prepare for each. The role-plays take about five minutes each.

 

Role-plays

You receive information for each role-play on a card that you keep while you do the role-play. The card explains the situation and what you are required to do. You may write notes on the card if you want.

The role-plays are based on typical workplace situations and reflect the demands made on a health professional in those situations

 

Linguistic Criteria:

·        Intelligibility: The impact of your pronunciation, intonation and accent on how clearly your listener can hear and understand what you’re saying

·        Fluency: The impact of the speed and smoothness of your speech on your listener’s understanding

·        Appropriateness of Language: The impact of your language, tone and professionalism on your listener’s understanding and comfort

·        Resources of Grammar and Expression: The impact of your level of grammatical accuracy and vocabulary choices on your listener’s understanding.

Clinical Communication Criteria:

·        Relationship-building: The impact of your choice of opening to the conversation and demonstration of empathy and respect on your listener’s comfort

·        Understanding and incorporating the patient’s perspective: The impact of how fully you involve the patient in the conversation on your listener’s understanding and comfort

·        Providing structure: The impact of how you organise the information you provide and introduce new topics for discussion on your listener’s understanding

·        Information-gathering: The impact of the type of questions you ask and how you listen to the responses on your listener’s understanding

·        Information-giving: The impact of how you provide information and check this information is being understood on your listener’s comfort and understanding.