Are you struggling knowing how to prepare for your OET reading?
Then watch this video where I show you what to do in order to pass, let's go!
Hello, I'm Jo from Specialist Language Courses, we are OET Premium Preparation Providers which
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There are three parts to the OET Reading. Part A which lasts 15 minutes, followed by Parts B and
C which you need to complete in 45 minutes. Let's start by looking at Reading part A.
In this part, you receive a text booklet with four short texts commonly found in the
workplace and these are all on the same topic. You also have a question paper, there are three
sets of questions: a matching task, sentence completion task and short answer questions.
You only have 15 minutes to complete 20 questions and you must spell the answers correctly.
For Reading A, you need to use the right strategies in order to finish all the paper
in time, let's take a look at what you need to do first. Do not read the text, you simply do not
have, time instead have a quick look at the text to notice what kind of information is in each one.
Pay attention to headings such as here, the different types of burns, and here,
for fluid resuscitation, where it is also divided into adults and children. Here we
have management for burns, which is numbered in order of completion and we can also notice that
there are lots of instructions here. There is often a table in one of the texts such as here,
we have information about adult and pediatric analgesia. Pay attention to the table headings
and don't forget you may need to find information from outside the tables, such as here and here.
So what strategies should you use to complete the tasks? Let's take a look. Complete the matching
task first as it will prepare you better for the other tasks, decide which text would contain
the answer and check the text only if needed, so for this one, which text would the answer be in?
How to categorize the severity is definitely going to be in text A. Let's move on to the other tasks.
For sentence completion, you should ask yourself what kind of word am I looking? for
for question seven here, it is a noun. What will they experience in addition to shrinkage?
I also want to focus on what words and phrases will help me find the answer, here being third
degree burns and shrinkage, then I need to decide which text should I look in? and for this one is
probably going to be text A. You then need to look in the text and scan for third degree and
perhaps a word meaning the same as shrinkage and here we can see considerable contraction,
so we know the answer is scarring. For short answer questions, you follow the same strategy,
what kind of word am I looking for? So for questions 15 it's maximum number of tries,
what words and phrases will help me find the answer? So here, attaching a drip at the scene
and also what text should I look in? For this one, text B. We then need to scan to
find the answer and here we can find intravenous fluids and on scene and we then read should not
be delayed by more than two cannulation attempts, so we know the answer is 2.
So how can you improve your reading skills for part A? Let's take a look at some things you can
do. You need to practice your scanning skills, use websites such as patient.info and the NHS,
and scan for high occurring words such as here, for burns assessment we could
scan for all the mentions of burns, or perhaps numbers, or you could work with a colleague and
write questions the other one has to scan for, such as this, how long will it usually take a
patient with an epidermal burn to heal? Can you find the answer? and here it is, a week.
Now let's move on to Parts B and C, you have 45 minutes for both parts B and C, so we recommend
spending about 10 to 15 minutes on Part B and 30 to 35 minutes on part C. For Part B there are six
short texts commonly found in the workplace, each extract will have a question and three
possible answers to choose from and you mark the answer by coloring in the circle with a pencil.
Let's take a look at the strategies to use for Reading part B.
Read the question and make sure you understand it, if it is not a question think about turning
it into one to help you focus, for example here you could ask, in what circumstance can a doctor
break patient confidentiality? Read the options and notice the differences, or you can do this
after reading the paragraph if you prefer. Read the text and look out for links to the question,
eliminate any obvious wrong answers and choose the correct answer. Be careful of distractors,
we can see here that option B is mentioned , but it does not answer the question,
we can see the condition for breaking confidentiality highlighted in blue. So
how can you improve for Part B? Let's have a look. If you can, read notice boards around the hospital
at the dentists, etc. Read policies on websites and documents in the workplace such as instruction
and procedure manuals, write down formal verbs and phrases and learn their meaning, for example
outline, establish, conclude, account for. What formal verbs and phrases can you find in this?
Here are some examples, don't forget to write them in your notebook and review regularly.
You can also practice breaking down the text into main ideas, summarise in your own words
to focus on the main points, for example here the first part talks about how confidentiality
is important to ensure medical attention and good care, it then says information can be disclosed
without consent if someone is at risk and goes on to say that patients should be informed of
this in advance where possible. And finally, let's move on to talk about Reading part C.
For part C you have two texts and two sets of questions, they are much longer and there are
16 questions in total. Each extract will have a question and four possible answers
to choose from and you mark your answer by coloring in the circle with a pencil.
So what strategies should you use for part C? Let's look at that now.
Frst of all, number the paragraphs in the text so you can find the right paragraph quickly,
read the question and make sure you understand it, read the options and notice the differences,
read the text and look out for links to the question, eliminate any obvious wrong answers
and choose the correct answer. However, you might find it better to read the options only
after you've read the paragraph to avoid getting distracted, try both ways and see
which one works best for you. Over to you, read this paragraph, which option is correct?
D is the correct option.
For part C, you will always get two lexical reference questions, you need to work out
the meaning added or what is being referred to by using the context of the paragraph. So how can you
improve for part C? As well as doing practice papers, it's really important that you develop
your skills and practice reading longer texts, let's take a look at some ideas you can do.
Read, read, read, as much as you can. Here are some good websites for texts,
and here are some activities to try with texts: summarise each paragraph in two to
three sentences, find all the linking expressions in a paragraph, decide if they are contrasting,
adding, expressing results, etc. Make a note of language used to express attitude and opinion,
make a note of evaluative and hedging language, make a note of cause and effect language,
now look at this text ,can you find any language that express attitude and opinion?
And here are some examples. You can also use any text, find reference words such as this, it, they,
and work out what they are referring to. Have a go at this now, what do these words refer to?
So the first "it" refers to high blood pressure,
"they" refers to 5.6 million people in the UK, the next "it" refers to high blood pressure again
and the "it" here refers to blood pressure and the final "it" refers to pressure.
Here are my top tips for reading, use your scanning skills for Reading part A,
be careful of distractors in Reading B and C,
develop your vocabulary and knowledge of language commonly used in Parts B and C,
read a variety of text to improve your reading skills and succeed in the OET exam.
I'd like to know which part of the reading paper you find most difficult, let me know in
the comments below. If you like this video, please like and share with your friends and colleagues so
we can help more people achieve success in the OET exam, don't forget to check out our website the
link's below to see how we can help you with your OET preparation, see you in the next video, bye!