Listening OET Tips PART A

(PROFESSIONALS- PATIENT CONSULTATIONS EXTRACTS)

Part A assesses your ability to identify the specific information during a consultation.

Note: the health professionals may be any one of the 12 professions who can take OET.

On Test Day, you have 30 seconds to read through the notes for each

Use the 30-second pause before the recording plays to focus your listening. Underline words and phrases before and after the gaps in the notes, and listen for this information when the recording starts, so that you are prepared to listen for the answer.

You hear two consultations involving a healthcare professional and patient. In this part, your ability to identify specific information is assessed as you complete the healthcare professional’s notes by filling in the blanks.

There are headings to help you. Each extract is about 5mins long.

The extract can start at any point in the consultation. You’ll mainly hear the patient talking during Part A. The healthcare professional, a specialist doctor or specialist nurse might ask questions or perhaps prompt the patient to continue with their story.

You listen to find the information to fill each of the gaps.

Heading help to guide you through the general stages of the consultation, for example, Recent symptoms, Past medical history, current treatment

What do you write down?

The words you write in the gaps are words that you hear the patient saying. You don’t have to change the patient’s words into the medical language. You also don’t need to change the form of the words (adjectives to a noun, singular to plural)

For example,

The patient says: I’ve have noticed that the pain in my forehead gets more intense in the evening.

The notes say: notice pain in the forehead 1————— in the evening

You fill the gap with 1. more intense

There is no word limit for your answers, but all answers will only require a word or short phrase.

LISTENING SUB TEST PART B

Listening Part B tests your ability to understand and identify:

 the gist of the recording

• Specific details within interactions
• The speaker’s purpose
• The opinion of the speaker
• The actions that will result from the workplace communication

Listening OET Tips PART B: SHORT DIALOGUES OR MONOLOGUES IN A HEALTHCARE SETTINGS

You hear six short recordings of about a minute each with dialogues between professionals, or a professional and a patient.

There could also be monologues where healthcare professional talks.

This part tests your ability to identify purpose or opinion and listen for gist and detail.      

For each extract, there is one multiple choice question. You need to identify the correct answer from the three options.

These short extracts are not linked in any way.

Some extracts are monologues, however, you may hear listening noises from the people listening to the monologue like Mm, Uh, huh, Okay. Other extracts are dialogues.

The extracts in part b are interactive workplace communications. If the workplace setting is one you are not familiar with, don’t worry; you aren’t expected to have specialized knowledge.

LISTENING SUB TEST PART C

In this part of the test, you’ll hear two different extracts. In each extract, you’ll hear health professionals talking about aspects of their work.

For questions 31 to 42, choose the answer (A, B or C) which fits best according to what you hear.

In Listening Part C, you hear either a presentation or an interview in each recording

An interview in Part C includes 2 speakers; one is a

healthcare expert and the other is the interviewer. The interviewer asks short questions, and the healthcare expert gives long answers to these questions. The interviewer’s questions always relate to the question you need to answer in the section you’re listening to at that point.

Listening OET Tips Part C

 Scan the Questions

Before the recording begins, you have 30 seconds to read through the questions. While looking at the questions, pay attention to the words in the question and answer choices. The words in the question will help you to identify the relevant part of the recording, and the correct answer can be heard in the recording shortly after this. To select the correct answer, you will need to choose the option that best reflects the meaning of what you hear in the recording. The questions in Part C tend to ask for the general meaning, or gist, of the section of the speech. These questions also aim to test your understanding of the arguments the speaker talks about, and the attitude or opinion of the speaker.

Part C: Presentations, talks or interviews with healthcare professionals.

You hear two short presentations or interviews of about five minutes each.

This section tests your ability to comprehend short talks or recorded presentations and interviews on medical topics that you may typically hear at the workplace.

There are six multiple-choice questions for each extract. Each question has three options.

Examples of Listening Part c extracts are.

• An interview with a healthcare professional about a health-related topic, of general interest.
• A workplace presentation relating to the speaker’s field of work, perhaps as an example of CPD (continuing professional development)
• a presentation about a healthcare professional’s experience caring for a patient with a particular disease or condition (similar to a case review presentation)
• A presentation about recent research a healthcare professional may have undertaken, e.g. Action research around an issue of concern in their area of practice. During Listening Part, you hear examples of the speaker’s attitude or opinion about something that they know about.
• The speaker may also tell you about someone else’s point of view about an issue
• The speaker’s point of view may include some hesitation about the project.

You should make sure you are familiar with what you have to do before you take the test.