Hi, 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 speaking
and how we can use the role card to help us. We will look at how to analyse the role card,
how we can use the information provided on the role card to help us and how we
can use the preparation time effectively. So, how should you use the role card? Well,
in the exam you will be given a role card which gives you important information. The role card
will tell you the setting, for example A&E, information about the patient and tasks to
complete during the roleplay. These are the steps involved in analysing the role card:
Step 1, look at the setting and find out who you are and who you're going to talk to, Step 2,
read any background information which gives you information about the medical issue, perhaps
previous treatment or even an indication of how the patient is feeling, Step 3, look at the tasks
and underline the function verbs, for example, explain, reassure, give advice, Step 4, use the
information given and the tasks to predict how the conversation might flow, and Step 5, brainstorm
useful language for each of the tasks and think about how you're going to begin the roleplay.
So let's look at an example role card and how you can follow these steps.
So, the first thing you should do is look at the setting and the description of the context,
find out who you are, are you a nurse working in A&E or perhaps the nurse at
a retirement home? This information will help you know how to start the roleplay approach,
then read the information provided about the context, this can provide useful information
about who you are going to speak to, such as the medical condition, previous treatment and even an
indication of how the patient or carer is feeling. So, for this role card we can see that you are a
nurse working in A&E and you are going to be speaking to the mother of a child. We find
out that the child has had a flare-up of their eczema and also a few details about the situation,
so the child has been scratching and now the skin is weeping discharged. We also find out that the
mother refuses to use steroid creams over concerns about their use, so this gives us an indication of
how she might react if we suggest she uses them. So, next we need to look at the tasks on the role
card and underline or circle the function verbs. For this role card, we have: find out, explain the
importance, reinforce and give advice. Use the information from the setting and the function
verbs to predict how the conversation might flow, so first of all, you might ask about the child's
skin and how it's been, then you might ask them about how they manage their daughter's skin,
and if the moisturising cream is not mentioned in the response, specifically ask about it. Then,
explain why it is important to use moisturising cream, remember they might be doing this already.
Then, you might ask about steroid cream, you need to find out their use of it and their concerns
about it, before you respond with the importance of using it. Based on the information on the role
card we know that the mother does not want to use the steroid cream, so we need to prepare for this,
we should elicit her concerns and find out why she doesn't want to use it, and then respond
to these concerns appropriately but explain why it is important to use steroid cream,
perhaps with a little persuasion, then, we will give further advice on how to manage
the child's eczema. We should also brainstorm some useful language that we might want to use
in the roleplay and perhaps write some down to help remind us during the roleplay. We can
use the function verbs in the task to think what phrases you might need, for example, "find out",
could you tell me a bit about...?, "explain the importance", it's important that you...,
"reinforce", it's essential that you... let me reassure you... and "give advice", so there are
some things you can do to help... it's a good idea to... I recommend... you should... Also use
the preparation time to decide how to begin the interaction, in this case it's probably the first
time you are meeting the mother, so you need to introduce yourself, you might say something like,
hello, my name is Jo, I'm one of the nurses here in A&E. I see you have come with your daughter,
could you tell me why you've come to see me today? So it's really important to use
your two to three minutes preparation time wisely, it can really make the difference
to your performance and be ready to start. Top tips for using the OET role card. Read
the information on the role card carefully to find out about the situation, underline or circle the
function verbs, think about how the conversation might flow and think of useful language to use.
So thanks for watching, if you would like more strategies and tips 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, don't forget to subscribe to get more videos like this, bye!