The Four components of OET

Listening

The listening subtest is 45 minutes long.

The listening sub test is the first test on the test day and is for about 45 minutes. 

The listening subtest consists of three parts with the 42 questions. 

The listening subtest is the same for all professions. 

The topic of generic medical interest, accessible to candidates across all professions. 

Each part consists of a variety of recorded audio as tracks testing different listening skills. There will be passes through the test to allow candidates to read questions or write their answers. 

The candidate will hear each recording once and are expected to write their answers while listening. 

Part A – Consultation extracts

This part assesses candidates’ Ability to understand, interpret and record details or specific information. There would be an increased focus on Patient centred language, and thus this path difference from metric typical structured consultation you will listen to 22 recorded health professional patient consultation and you will complete the health professional knows using the information you here there will be tell questions in each consultation 

Part B short workplace stress

Part B consists of 6 short dialogues or monologues in work places settings that the candidates’ ability to listen to the gist, detail and course of action. 

Part C presentation extracts

In part C you will listen to two different extracts and you will answer 6 multiple-choice questions for each extract. The extracts could be monologues or interviews with Healthcare professionals.

Reading 

The reading sub-test is for 60 minutes. The Reading sub-test consists of three parts.

Part A – expeditious reading task
Part B – multiple-choice questions. 

The topic of generic medical interest and are therefore accessible to candidates across all professions.

Part A – expeditious reading task 

Part A assesses your ability to locate specific information from 4 short texts in a quick and effective manner. The four short text related to a single Healthcare topic and you must answer 20 questions in the allocated time period. 

Part B and C: carefully reading the task 

Part B assesses your ability to identify the detail, gist or main point of six texts sourced from the Healthcare workspace (100 – 150 words each). The text might consist of extracts from policy documents, Hospital guidelines, manuals or internal communication, such as email or memos. 

For each text, there is one three-option multi-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.