I have collected hints for the OET for nurses which I hope will help in doing the test. It can be purchased on Lulu.
I am often asked the question 'What if I don't know anything about the disease or condition during the OET?' It may be during the role play when you are thinking about how to explain the treatment for a condition or just explaining the condition to a patient. The NHS Choices website is a great resource to help with this. The picture above from the NHS Choices link relates to Jaundice in Newborns, however, there are several other examples which you can practise with. You will also find glossaries of the terms used in the MOM in the pages following the map.
Whilst the MOM will be of most use to candidates doing the OET for doctors and nurses, they will be of use to other groups - pharmacists, physios, radiographers and podiatrists, for example.
I continue to receive emails from prospective candidates asking how they can best prepare for the OET. Lately, there has been a run on questions about the Listening test. Most of my students feel that the speed of the Listening test is faster and consequently the dialogue (Part A) is more difficult to understand.
I have checked on this point and the bad news is that the speed has not changed. The difficulty is that Part A is an example of authentic speaking. This means that you are 'in the room' with the practitioner and the patient, listening to a real conversation. As with any real conversation, there are times that the speaker will talk a bit faster or slower. They may vary the pitch of their speech - perhaps speaking a bit softer if they are unsure of what they are saying.
So, how do you prepare for this part of the Listening? You need to listen to as many authentic conversations as possible, trying to listen for the structure of the text. When does the speaker pause? (is it to draw attention to a key point?). Does the speaker's voice go up at the end of the sentence? Remember that if you are listening to Australians speaking, their voices often go up at the end of a sentence. This is more common in female speech. Sometimes it may appear that they are asking a question or sounding unsure but this may not be the case. You need to listen to everything in and around the sentence to be sure.
Talk-back radio is a good opportunity to hear real conversations. They give you the opportunity to develop awareness of how people speak especially how they speak to strangers. Listen and take notes. Identify the words which go together as common phrases. As you become familiar with these phrases, your brain will start 'filling in the missing words'. What I mean is that as you train your brain to listen for key words; the surrounding less important words of the phrase will be filled in for you.
Listening skills are similar to reading skills in that you need to train yourself to pick out /listen for key terms only.
Try to prepare for all 4 skills (reading, writing, listening and speaking) together. I develop packs around a single health topic for this reason. By reading about a topic e.g. skin cancer, you start to build a vocabulary of terms relating to the topic. Then,as you listen to a podcast about skin cancer, for instance,you will recognise the key terms because you have already seen them in print. This is very important as many words when spoken do not resemble the word when it is written.
So, read the word, look up its meaning and check the pronunciation (use any online dictionary which has audio clips for pronunciation). As you hear the word, it is now familiar. A good example of this is the word 'phlegm'. Unless you had read the word and checked the pronunciation, you would have no idea what was being spoken about!
You should also add any phrases which go with your key term. For example, 'cough up' is often heard with 'phlegm'. Carry a small notebook with you and write down phrases or compound words which belong together. This is another way of training your brain to hear only the key terms. Remember that your brain will eventually start to fill in the gaps by itself.
The OET Reading test Part A is a test of several things:
1. Can you skim a text for important information (key terms) without reading the whole text?
2. Can you scan the text for only the information you need to answer a question?
3. Can you use different forms of a word? E.g. A word in the text is given as a verb but you have to use the noun form in the answer.
4. Can you understand statistics and use words to describe what the numbers say?
I have made three YouTube clips which give some advice on answering Part A. I have gone through each question on the Answer Booklet to explain the type of question and reason for the answer. The transcript of the videos is available as a single pdf on this website.
You will need to be able to read medical texts for the reading and the speaking tests. For the speaking test, there may be common medical abbreviations as well as medical terms.
Therefore,you should spend some time revising (or learning) some of the following:
The reading task is the same for all professions, so you may need to be familiar with a wide range of topics. Despite this, you should start with the 'basics'. It's a good idea to build up your own glossary of terms in the following areas:
The reading task is often presented as three to four short texts about the same topic. The information may be expressed in different ways so you will need to understand equivalent terms. By predicting the terms you are likely to be reading, you can scan for important information much easier. For example, if the text is about the brain you may expect to read terms like cognitive function, cerebral, ischaemia, frontal lobe, carotid artery etc. A text about the prostate may include terms like TURP, benign prostatic hypertrophy, PSA, hesitancy,empty the bladder and so on.
By developing a glossary of terms (and adding to it as you read more) you start training your brain to expect to see certain terms within a topic. Try to learn related medical prefixes and suffixes as well as this helps you to predict unknown words. For instance, if you are unsure of the term 'hypertrophy' in benign prostatic hypertrophy but you know that 'hyper' means 'increase',then you could make a guess that 'hypertrophy' means an increase of some sort (in this case, the prostate).
Many students email me for help with the OET speaking test. Whilst it is not recommended that you simply copy a dialogue or learn it by heart, it does help to listen to a sample dialogue to get an idea of what you are being asked to do. The role play card will guide you as to what you are trying to communicate. There will usually be 3 or 4 tasks for you to do. Of course, you don't have the advantage of reading the 'patient's' card so you need to guess what they might say.
This role play is about bed wetting. The mother (or father) of a young boy (4 years old) has come to see you in a clinic setting. So, you may guess that:
1. she (or he) will be worried that there might be something wrong with the child - they need reassurance.
2. they may not know much about the condition - you need to explain it.
3. they may not know how to manage the condition - you need to give advice.
Make sure you know the expressions you need to use for these communication functions.
Before you practise the dialogue, make sure you predict some of the terms you may hear or need to use yourself. You should check that you know terms which relate to the urinary system, for example.
There is a pdf available on this site with some activities relating to the video as well as a transcript. Otherwise, watch the video and try to identify the way the nurse conducts the conversation. Would you have done it this way or a different way?
This is my first blog on the OET site,although I have been writing about OET on my English for Nursing and Healthcare website for quite some time. The OET is becoming more and more popular as a specific language test for healthcare professionals with a very wide range of healthcare areas covered.
I would like to highlight a couple of issues which I have been discussing with students and colleagues recently.
One point raised by Frank Cheshire who has just become involved with the provision of OET in Madang, Indonesia was the issue of handwriting. I must admit that I hadn't thought about this one at all but it made a lot of sense. Legible handwriting is one of the marking criteria but how do you practise? And how do you practise so that you can write legibly under exam conditions?
One way is to practise writing the common phrases you will use - phrases like:
I'm writing to refer...
If you require any further information, please contact me on this number.
Mr X presented with
On examination he was found to have...
Another way is to practise handwriting the whole of your referral letters. Even if you have to type the letter first so you can do a word count and ensure that you are under the word limit. Then time yourself writing the letter. Make sure you can write 180-200 words legibly in 45 minutes.
Finally, practise writing commonly found words so you do not waste time thinking about the spelling of the word. E.g. referral - you don't want to be thinking 'how many r's?'
The second issue surrounds the Listening test. Both the listening and the reading tests are the same for all professions so you need to read and listen to a wide variety of texts. The last OET had a listening about dentistry, for example, which was a challenge for many students. Also, try to revise medical terminology especially your knowledge of medical prefixes and suffixes. This will help you guess any unknown words. For example, in a podiatry reading you would expect to come across the prefix 'onycho' (nail). Having the prefix of a word gives you a better chance to guess the rest of the word.
I am a medical English author of books and online courses. I have a particular interest in OET preparation and am an OET premium preparation provider with my colleagues at Specialist Language Courses. I am based in the UK.