The Test Taker’s Guide to Acing the OET Listening Sub-test Designed specifically for healthcare practitioners, the Occupational English Test is an international English language assessment examination recognized by regulatory healthcare bodies and councils in various English-speaking countries, including Australia, New Zealand and the UK. Moreover, OET provides a valid and reliable proficiency test of all four language skills. As an OET test taker, it is important that you enroll in an OET training center as it helps develop your language skills.
As communication plays a vital role in the healthcare sector, an OET training center helps students reach their full potential as healthcare professionals abroad by providing a comprehensive OET preparation course programs and best OET instructors. During your OET classes, instructors will guide you on how to ace the four sub-tests of the Occupational English Test. One component of the OET that you will encounter is the listening sub-test.
OET Listening Sub-Test There are two parts of the listening sub-test, with approximately 20–28 questions. The topics in this test are of common healthcare interests that are accessible to candidates across all medical practitioners. Each part consists of about 15 minutes of recorded speech; including pauses to give you time to write your answers. Furthermore, you will only listen to each recording once and you are allowed to write your answers while listening. Here are the two parts of the listening sub-test:
Part A – Consultation
The first part of the OET listening sub-test aims to assess your ability to follow facts and information during a consultation. In this part, you will be given 20–25 minutes to listen a recorded health professional–patient session and will be required to complete a note taking task, which must also contain relevant headings about the consultation.
Tip: Personal shorthand is an effective note-taking technique in which abbreviations and symbols are used in place of whole words. While listening to each recording, apply personal shorthand in your note-taking as it helps you record more information quickly.
Part B – Presentation
The second part of the listening sub-test assesses your skills on how to understand a short talk on a medical-related topic. In this part, you will be given 20–25 minutes to hear a recorded talk by a healthcare practitioner and you will answer a wide range of fixed and open-ended tasks, including Multiple-Choice Questions, Sentence Completion, Short-Answer Questions, Summary Completion, Lecture Notes Completion, Table/Flow-Chart/Mind-Map Completion, Word Replacement Response and Matching Responses.
Tip: With so many tasks involved in this part, building your growth mindset is essential. Khanacademy.org states that “A growth mindset is an attitude that embraces hard work, grit, and determination as for the keys to intelligence and capability.” To build you growth mindset, you must do the following; create a successful file, be optimistic, motivate yourself, work on your learning style and manage your time in OET preparation course program Moreover, the OET listening sub-test is facilitated by trained assessors at the OET centers and the answer booklets are assigned randomly to prevent any conflict of interest.
Follow this test taker’s guide to increase your chance of acing the OET Listening Sub-test. Looking for more test taker’s guide and study tips? Enroll now in JRooz OET training center and boost your medical career abroad!