Updates in the OET

Admin May 10, 2018
Updates in the OET


In order to accurately reflect the changing healthcare landscape, the Occupational English Test (OET) is also regularly updated. OET believes in being responsive to the healthcare sector, and in ensuring the test remains relevant in today’s global context. The updates ensure that you will work with the types of real communication scenarios you will most likely face in a contemporary work environment.

Contemporary healthcare is more patient-centric and healthcare professionals must be far better at gathering information so as to understand the needs of their patients and respond to their concerns. As more and more healthcare professionals and patients travel to various countries to give or receive care, they encounter a wide range of English accents and must be able to understand and respond effectively. Additionally, with advances in technology, healthcare professionals should be able to communicate with peers and patients not only in the workplace but also remotely. The changes in OET reflect all these evolutions in the healthcare environment.

 

9th September 2018 will see the new updates come into effect. Registrations will open on the 21 June. From September 2018, results for the four sub-tests that make up OET (Listening, Reading, Writing, Speaking) will be reported on a scale from 0 to 500, alongside the usual OET grades (A to E).

What are the changes?

There will be no changes in many of the OET test tasks, and the format of the test and the focus in each sub-test (Listening, Reading, Writing and Speaking) will remain the same.

The main updates that will be in place from September are as follows:

  • in the Speaking sub-test there will be a wider range of communication skills, more similar to those that you encounter at work
  • in the Listening sub-test a broader range of accents will be introduced to match global accents.
  • in the Listening and Reading sub-tests, new kinds of tasks will be added that reflect professional-to-professional communication, such as consulting with a colleague, or a doctor to doctor conversation.
  • the Reading sub-test will include new task types such as matching, short-answer questions, and a new broader range of documents, such as policy or procedure documents.
  • there will be an additional and more detailed numerical scoring scale that is included alongside your A to E results score so that you have a better idea of how you did.

The difficulty level is not expected to change.

<h3Listening:

The new Listening sub-test will take about 45 minutes and include three briefer sections as follows:

Section Duration Task
Part A 15 minutes Two separate consultations between a healthcare professional and a patient
Part B 10 minutes Six short dialogues or monologues in workplace settings
Part C 15 minutes Two long presentations or interviews with health professionals
TOTAL 40-45 minutes  

 

Reading:

The updated Reading sub-test will take 60 minutes to complete and includes three parts as follows:

Section Duration Task
Part A 15 minutes Expeditious (fast) reading task
Part B 45 minutes Six short workplace extracts
Part C Two long presentation passages
TOTAL 60 minutes  

 

Writing:

There will be no updates to the Writing sub-test.

Speaking:

There will be no updates to the format of the Speaking sub-test.

However, OET will now also assess clinical communication skills because these are skills that you will need to be successful at work, such as relationship building, understanding the patient’s perspective, providing structure to the conversation, gathering information from the patient and establishing what the patient already knows.

Students who have already been studying- take heart! All the work you have put in so far and the improvements you have made in your English communication skills will still help you in the updated OET. Please do familiarise yourself thoroughly with the new test structure to ensure there are no surprises.

Note that new sample tests will be published on the OET website ahead of registrations for the September test, which open on 21 June.

To know more, visit:
https://www.occupationalenglishtest.org/

2 Replies to “Updates in the OET”

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