If you are a nurse, doctor, or other healthcare professional from India considering emigrating to countries such as the UK, Ireland, Australia or New Zealand, then you will be familiar with the Occupational English Test (OET). If you are preparing for this exam, the first thing you need to know is how many questions in OET listening for nurses and other healthcare tracks. The four areas in which you will be tested are listening, reading, writing and speaking. Most of the time, people fear for listening test, as there is only a single chance to listen to each audio recording. If you get distracted you may miss two or three answers.
However, do not panic! To successfully manage your test anxiety, you must know what the test involves before attempting it, and by reading through this guide, you will clarify the components of the OET Listening test and give yourself a guide to prepare for the test. This guide will describe how many questions are there in OET Listening, its four parts, which are long conversation, short conversation, long lecture, and short lecture, and give you enough time between parts in order to be able to answer all of the questions correctly. Furthermore, we provide some example questions so that you can practice for your test, taking the same way that all OETs are taken.
This kind of resource will assist you in preparing to participate fully and confidently in the English language testing process (OET).
What is the OET?
The OET is an English proficiency examination that was created specifically for the medical field. It can be considered an equivalent of the IELTS, except where a person will be asked to write a paper discussing space exploration or global warming, the OET does nothing more than ask the same type of questions, but in the context of a medical environment.
As you will see, the type of scenarios presented in the OET are the same types of situations that occur on a daily basis within a hospital or clinic. The Cambridge Boxhill Language Assessment Organization owns the OET and is recognized by hospitals, medical licensing boards and immigration departments in more than 30 different countries.
The OET is administered for 12 different medical professions (i.e. nursing, medicine, pharmacy, physiotherapy, etc). Regardless of your chosen field, the OET Listening Test will be the same for all candidates. The aim of OET Listening Test is to ensure that you will be able to effectively communicate with your patients and coworkers and participate in medical lectures starting when you arrive in an English-speaking country.
Overall Structure of the OET Listening Test
This part of the guide will summarize the arrangement of the listening test in the OET, highlighting the crucial OET Listening score out of 42 required for success.
| Exam Components | Assessment Guidelines |
| Number of Questions | 42 |
| Duration | 40 minutes |
| Sections | Three Parts (A, B and C) |
| Audio | Played only once |
| Target Score | You need to obtain a grade B that is 350 points
|
Breakdown of the 3 Parts: A, B, and C
To get an idea about the OET listening format, you must understand that the three parts of the exam are complex, which starts from a short dialogue between a nurse or doctor and a patient (Part A) to a series of brief audio clips in the workplace (Part B) and then advancing to lengthy, professional lectures (Part C).
Part A in OET
In this section of the exam, you will listen to two different audio clips. The audio clips are actual recordings of conversations that took place between a healthcare provider and a patient. Each conversation will last approximately 4 to 5 minutes.
Your Task
During this portion of the exam, you will receive a piece of paper that contains handwritten notes made by the healthcare provider about the patient. There will be blank spaces in the notes for you to fill in. As you listen to the patient describe their situation, you need to fill in the blanks with the exact words or phrases.
Total Number of Questions
There will be 24 questions in total, 12 questions for each of the two audio clips.
Tip for Part A
There are 24 questions out of the total 42 questions, making up over half of your listening score. If you do well on this section, you will be very close to passing your overall score on the exam. You will get a maximum of 30 seconds time to quickly glance at your blank notes before the audio starts. During the 30 seconds, you need to try to guess what kind of word you will have to fill in, which might be a number, part of the body, symptom, or name of a medication. Early guessing will improve the ability of your brain to concentrate on what you hear during the audio clip.
Part B in OET
To complete this section, you will have to listen to 6 short recorded audio clips. Each clip will be around 40 to 60 seconds with normal sounds you would hear in an everyday hospital atmosphere, like a nurse handing off to another nurse for a patient shift or a doctor briefing a team.
Your Task
After listening to the clip, you will answer one question based on what you heard, selecting one of three choices from A, B or C.
Total Number of Questions
Your total questions are 6, one question for each clip.
Tip for Part B
In this section you must understand the main point of the conversation. You will also get 15 seconds to read each question before listening to the associated audio clip. Use this time wisely. Listen for the main purpose of the conversation.
Part C: Medical Presentations and Interviews (Questions 31−42)
What are medical presentations and interviews?
This section of the exam is known as the most difficult with two lengthy recordings that are 4−5 minutes in length, such as a medical expert presenting a lecture or a health journalist interviewing a physician about a recent study.
What Will You Be Doing in Medical Presentations and Interviews?
For each long recording, there are six multiple-choice questions (3 choices, A, B, C).
How Many Total Questions?
12 total questions, 6 for each of the two long audio recordings.
Tip for Part C
You will get 90 seconds to review all the questions before the audio starts. This is extremely important. Do not sit simply instead read and underline all important keywords in the question. Each of the presenters will use a great number of distractions, words from option A and option B. You cannot match a random word and use it for your answer. You must think logically based on the way the presenter is presenting his or her argument.
Test Timeline
The OET does not provide an additional 10 minutes like other paper-based tests where you receive 10 minutes to record your answer. You must either write or choose your response while the recording is playing. The audio recording will tell you about the entire test and the total time for the test will be about 40 minutes. Here’s how that time is divided:
- Before each test begins, the audio recording will exactly explain when to turn to the next page and to begin reading the test questions. You will get 30 seconds to test part A, 15 seconds for part B, and 90 seconds for part C.
- During each part of the test, you will listen to the audio recording and write your answers to the questions right after they are presented.
- After completing each test part, you will have very short pauses, a few seconds between when the audio ends for one part of the test and when the next begins. So you can check your answer to the last question before the next audio begins.
Important rule for paper based exams: For the paper-based OET, you must use a 2B pencil to completely shade in the circles for Part B and Part C of your answer sheet. The answer sheet will be scanned by a computer, and if the answer is marked with a pen, the scanner will not recognize your mark. If you mark your answer sheets incorrectly, you can erase it with an eraser.
Actual OET listening test samples
Here’s how the questions appear on the test.
Part A example (fill in the blanks).
For example, Jonathan Miller had a back injury and visits the clinic for help. You must listen to Jonathan speak but fill in the missing parts of the nurse’s notepad.
Case Note: Jonathan Miller (Back Injury).
- Job Patient does (1) ____________________ (Note: needs to lift heavy things and travel long distances)
- When invoiced, he hurt his back (2) ____________________ ago.
- Current pain is now
- Pain sharp lower left of (3) ____________________.
- Is stiffness worst in the morning time?
- Feeling (4) ____________________ down in both legs.
- Dayway Effect: Patient states he cannot (5) ____________________, and this makes him feel very agitated.
For Part B Example (Short Clip MCQ), you will answer a question after listening to a 45-second audiotape of a nurse manager’s conversation with her staff.
Question 25: The nurse manager tells her staff there is a new way to handle patients, and there is an important reason for her to warn her staff.
- A) The risk of patients falling during transfers is very high.
- B) The consequence of not following the rules will be a penalty for staff members.
- C) Some of the broken mechanical hoists will no longer be used.
For Part C Example (Long Presentation MCQ), you will listen to a 5-minute interview with a heart specialist and have the opportunity to answer multiple questions following the interview.
Question 31: Dr. Amanda Ross believes that the initial research for the new cholesterol medication had issues because:
- A) There were an insufficient number of patients who participated in the study.
- B) Doctors did not inquire about the type of foods their patients consumed.
- C) Researchers did not follow up on patients long enough.
Strategies for Healthcare Workers
As an Indian citizen or resident and engaging as a student in India, you have most likely become quite proficient at reading and writing English. However, you may struggle sometimes with understanding very different sounding English as it is pronounced by speakers all over the world.
There are four practical, successful methods that can assist you as you prepare for your OET Listening exam:
1. Dictation Exercises
Dictation is one of the fastest methods of developing your ability to hear. Use a short video or audio clip of English conversation. Listen to the first sentence, pause the audio, and then write exactly what you hear. After this, open the video and check your accuracy to compare what you wrote against the English written subtitles. During this you will find that there are a lot of short words like has, been, in, and at, that you missed when you heard them spoken at normal speed.
2. Try Shadowing Technique
A lot of students struggle with Western accents. To help with this, use the shadowing method. Use your headphones to listen to OET audio scripts and then repeat the words at the same time same as the speaker. Avoid waiting for them to finish the whole sentence, instead do it along with them. This helps your brain hear the natural rhythm and cope with the speed of the native speaker.
3. Learn Common Phrases of Use
While communicating with British or Australian patients in part, they will not naturally use medical terms, instead they will use everyday English words. So it is important that you are familiar with the common everyday phrases this will help you when patients tell you how they feel. You can recognize the meaning quickly and write down the answer in your notes.
4. The Importance of Quality
Implementing targeted OET Listening tips during your study sessions is vital. Do 1 to 2 mock tests correctly instead of doing 5 tests daily and not analyzing your answers. While doing this, if you get an answer wrong, play the audio again and listen to that section at least three times and try to identify what caused the incorrect answer.
Conclusion
The OET Listening examination consists of 42 questions that are simple, yet organized. Knowing how to use these materials in order to prepare yourself for the exam, including practicing with a variety of Western dialects as well as learning common informal terms for patients, and being able to fulfill your goal of passing it. It will allow you to pursue the medical career you desire in another country because you will have passed the OET!
Tiju’s Academy is the leading coaching center in Kerala for Occupational English Test (OET) education. We have dedicated our entire effort towards enabling Indian healthcare professionals to realize their aspirations of pursuing a professional career should they leave the country. Our OET training involves high-quality study resources, continual practice with mock exams, regular (intensive) listening exercises to allow for adequate comprehension of Western accents, personal guidance from any of our excellent teachers, and feedback on how to pass each component of your learning objective.
Tiju’s Academy offers both OET online courses and offline courses with a proven track record of success using demonstrated techniques that produce high rates of success in examinations and the flexibility of classroom hours provides an excellent opportunity to successfully complete the OET on the first attempt!
