Hello, I'm Jo from Specialist Language Courses, we are OET Premium Preparation Providers which
means we are experienced and skilled in what we do, helping people achieve success in the OET
exam. So, in today's video we're going to look at OET Writing and how to understand the Assessment
Criteria, we will look at an overview of the Assessment Criteria, what the descriptors mean,
how we can use the criteria in our self-study and common mistakes to avoid. So, how are you
assessed? Well, you are assessed on a set of six criteria: Purpose, have you made the purpose of
the letter clear and is it immediately apparent? then we have Content, have you included all the
relevant information needed by the reader and is it accurate? Conciseness and Clarity, test whether
you have summarised the case notes in a clear way and avoided including information the reader
does not need and then Genre and Style, have you written in a factual way using professional and
fairly formal language? Organisation and Layout, examines if you have used the correct letter
layout and organise the information logically. Language, have you used language accurately and
flexibly? So, purpose is scored out of three and all the rest have a maximum of seven. You can find
a downloadable copy of the OET writing criteria on the OET website. So, how can you use the writing
criteria in your OET preparation? Well, you can use the OET writing criteria to help you improve
aspects of your writing, if you know what the examiners are looking for you can make sure
that you include it. Look at the highest band score for each criterion and aim to fulfil all
the parts of the description, so that your writing can be matched to a high band score. Think about
creating a checklist based on the descriptors and use this every time you write to ensure that you
are meeting the criteria. Let's have a look at one I've created for purpose. So here you can see that
the highest band score for this criterion says, purpose of the document is immediately apparent
and sufficiently expanded as required. So, what do you need to do? Well, you should make sure that
the purpose is clearly expressed at the beginning of the letter and that the details are expounded
later in the letter. Have a look at these case notes: you are the charge nurse at Summerton
Community Hospital where Mr Smith has had a hip replacement - you are writing a discharge letter
to the nurse at the retirement home where the patient lives, about care required. Let's look
at some paragraphs expressing the purpose of this letter, which one do you think is best?
If we look at paragraph number one, too much detail has been included and the purpose is not
clear. You only need to explain the general purpose at the beginning of the letter not
all the specifics - these can be explained in detail later - which is expanding the purpose
of the letter. Let's look at paragraph 2 - here, the purpose of this task is not expressed. There
is no mention of ongoing care and using the phrase "refer" in this case is incorrect as
you are not referring the patient. What about this one? Well, in paragraph 4 the purpose is
hidden within lots of detail and it's difficult to find, but if we look at paragraph 3, the purpose
is clearly expressed and easy to identify which is what you want. Let's move on to Content. So,
for content you need to make sure that the information you include is important for the
reader to know, that you have not left out any key information relating to the care to be provided
by the reader and you also need to make sure that the information you have included is accurate. If
we look at the discharge plan for the James Smith case, we should include all this information as it
is all relevant to the ongoing care to be provided by the reader. One mistake that some candidates
make is not explaining all the details of the specific action to be taken by the reader, let's
look at an example of this. If we wrote, it would be appreciated if you could monitor his progress
and provide appropriate care, the reader would not have enough details of the care required,
appropriate care is not specific enough. You also need to make sure that you copy dates correctly,
here the date has accidentally been written as a month later. Another common mistake is to request
action, rather than just informing, so to request that the reader performs a course of action
which they do not need to do for example, here information about physiotherapy is incorrectly
expressed as something the reader needs to do, what the writer should have done is just inform
the reader that the physiotherapist will contact them to arrange physiotherapy. So, let's look at
conciseness and clarity. So, for conciseness and clarity you need to make sure that your letter is
not too long and not too short, that you have not included information that the reader does
not need to know, you also need to summarise the relevant information in a clear way without using
long sentences and unnecessary words, remember that healthcare professionals are short of time
so they need to be able to find information easily. You should also make sure that the
ideas expressed in your letter are easy to follow, let's have a look an example. So, here too much
irrelevant information has been included, for this letter the focus should be on post-discharge care,
rather than all these details which do not impact the care to be given by the reader. The
information in the second paragraph is irrelevant, as it tells the reader about preoperative
treatment which is no longer relevant. The reader does not need to know details such as "the x-ray
confirmed the fracture", all they need to know is that the patient had a fracture and then underwent
an operation. Also, be careful not to repeat information, in this example the operation has
been mentioned twice. The past medical history is also irrelevant, it does not relate to this
medical issue in this letter and the reader would know this anyway as there is an existing
relationship in place. Let's look at genre and style now, so genre and style is to do with the
type of language you use, the style of language. You need to make sure that you write in a factual
way, so no language of opinion with phrases such as unfortunately. Use language suitable for the
reader, so do not include medical terminology if you are not writing to a nurse or doctor,
only use abbreviations if they are known by the reader and use polite request phrases to show
respect for the reader. Using an appropriate style for the reader is important, look at this example,
this could be better expressed using more formal style and more appropriate language, could also
be improved using the correct address Mr Smith, not Mr James. It could further be improved with
use of passive for example, Mr Smith was admitted to the hospital, using more professional language
such as admitted to the hospital, rather than came and also using, he underwent a hip replacement,
rather than the surgeon did a hip replacement. Also, avoid writing in very informal language
like this. Use polite request phrases, don't use note form and don't use informal language such
as "gonna". Now let's move on to talk about organisation and layout, so you need to make
sure you write in clear paragraphs and leave a space between them, ensure that the correct
letter layout is used, including the address of the recipient. Key information needs to be easy
to find and not hidden within lots of detail, and ideas need to be logically grouped together. Have
a look at these two descriptions of the patient's current situation and discharge plan, the first
one is a little confusing. The ideas have not been logically grouped together and information has
been repeated, also the key information is hidden within the paragraph and so it's not easy to find.
In the second example the ideas are separated into information about mobility and physiotherapy and
a second paragraph about care to be provided by the reader and important information regarding
the wound. Let's look at language, so you do not need to use overly complex grammatical structures,
minor errors are okay and they should not affect your score too much, but when errors start causing
a strain for the reader this is when they become more problematic. So, for language, you should
check that the correct spelling is used especially when copying names and medications, and check that
you've used commas correctly, also check that you are using appropriate grammar for the situation,
avoid unnecessary complex structures and of course check your work for accurate grammar. As I said
before, minor errors shouldn't be a problem, let's look at some examples of errors. So,
to set the context, all these sentences are describing a past visit to a GP surgery and
it is the patient's first visit in a series of visits. Look at these three pairs of phrases,
which ones do you think caused more strain for the reader? In sentence 1a, the spelling is clearly
causing strain. while 1b, there are errors, but the words are still understandable. In 2a,
the first sentence is confusing as it is written in present tense rather than past tense and so
the reader might be confused as to when the action occurred, there is an error in 2b,
but this is minor and does not really affect the understanding of what happened and when. And in
the last two sentences 3a and 3b, 3a shows limited control of sentence structure and the reader would
need to work very hard to understand the meaning however, sentence b, meaning can
still be determined even though it does have an error. Top tips for Writing Criteria, make sure
you understand what the criteria means, use the top descriptors to make a checklist to use when
writing, review your writing regularly and match to the writing criteria. So, thanks for watching
if you would like more tips and strategies on how to prepare for the OET exam check out our website,
link below. Please, like and share so we can help more people achieve success in
the OET exam and don't forget to subscribe so you can get more videos like this, bye!