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 take
a look at the strategies that you can use for Reading A.
We will look at a brief overview of the reading paper in particular Reading A,
how to approach Reading A and some study tips to help you prepare.
So, what happens in the OET reading test? Here, you can see an overview of the
reading exam, we are going to focus on part A for
which you only have 15 minutes to complete
before the paper is taken away. I'm going to talk through some
strategies you can use to help with this time pressure,
but first, let's review the format of Reading A.
There are four texts and one text usually contains a visual or numerical
information, such as a table or flowchart, there are
20 questions in total and three different task types, a matching task,
sentence completion and short answer questions.
Here is an example of the text you will see.
And here, you can see the types of
questions for part A.
So, how should you approach Reading A?
Let's take a look at some of the strategies you can use.
The first thing to remember, is that you only have 15 minutes
and 20 questions, so you should not read the text, you simply do not have
time. Instead, look at the headings and the
format of the texts and what kind of information each one contains.
Here, we can see that text a is a description
of Benign Paroxysmal Positional Vertigo or BPPV, what it is
and who it affects. Text B, is about the Hallpike Positional Test,
which is a diagnostic tool for vertigo and this text contains a visual.
Text C, talks about the Treatment of Vertigo
focusing on BPPV, and text D, is a table of Management
options for the condition and their effectiveness.
You should complete the matching task first as this activity will give you
more insight into the kind of information in each
text and it will prepare you for the other tasks.
So, for this task, you should read each description
in turn and decide which text contains the answer,
use the headings and your knowledge of what is in the text to help you decide,
a lot of the time it can be done without even looking at the text,
but you can check quickly to confirm if necessary.
Let's take a look at number one. In which text can you find information about
movement debris from the inner canal? Well,
based on what we have seen already, we know that this would be in text A.
Similarly, number two, how faulty signs to the brain
cause vertigo? This would also come from the description
in text A. What about number three? this information would clearly be found
in text B.
No, let's look at short answer questions.
In each question, you can see what kind of information you are looking for
and words and phrases to help you locate the answer.
So, for question 11 here, we can see that we want to find the type of
treatment that the Epley Manoeuvre is and the Epley Manoeuvre
is the word we should scan for to find the relevant part.
We then need to decide which text to look in
and as we are looking for a treatment it's probably going to be in text C,
so let's look there.
Fairly quickly we can find the Epley Manoeuvre,
and reading there, we can see that it is a re-balancing treatment
so that is the answer.
Sentence completion is the other task type for
Reading A. For this task, you need to decide what
kind of information would complete the gap.
So, for question 15, we are looking for a noun
and specifically one which begins with a vowel because you have the article - an
before the gap. We can then use the words moving and standing still to help us
locate the answer. We also need to know where to look and
for this question the answer is most probably going to be
in text A, so let's see if we can scan for the answer quickly.
Here are the clues from the question and if we read this section the answer is
clearly illusion. We can now move quickly onto the next question.
So, how can you prepare for Reading A?
It's really important that you develop your reading skills for the OET exam
by reading widely, only doing exam practice papers will
not sufficiently prepare you for the exam.
For Reading A, you need to develop your scanning technique.
One way to do this, is to take any text and scan for specific words,
let me show you an example of how to do this.
Here, is a text on the management of BPPV. So, one idea would be to scan for a
particular word, for example, all the mentions of the word
vertigo, like this. Think about using your finger
or a pencil to help you scan and underline or circle the words as you
find them, or you could scan for numbers,
or scan pages on medical conditions for symptoms,
causes and treatments. patient.info and the NHS website
are good resources for these activities, but you can really use any text.
Top tips for Reading A. In the exam, don't read the text,
you don't have time. Use the headings to help you know where
to look, use the information provided in the
questions to help you find the answer and move on if you get stuck on one
question, practice your scanning skills in your
self-study time. So, thanks for watching, if you would like
more strategies and tips on how to prepare
check out our website, you will also find handouts which you can download
with everything we've talked about in today's video, links below.
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videos like this, bye!