Twenty-four gaps from two consultations, heard once, and then the talks.
OET Listening opens with the part that decides it: two recorded consultations, each about five minutes long, each with twelve gaps in a set of notes, and no second hearing. Parts B and C are multiple choice on workplace extracts and presentations, and they are the same for a nurse, a dentist and a vet. This page is the shape of all three parts, a method and a trap for each, a Part A consultation you can run with a partner or a phone, a handover item worked, and a way to build your own practice from any recording with captions.
Why this matters. Listening is the sub-test clinicians tend to pass, and the one they lose a grade on by carelessness: a number that was corrected, a job written as a place, a drug name half-heard and then abandoned. Part A is twenty-four of the forty-two marks and it is note-taking, which every clinician already does at work. The difference is that the notes are somebody else’s, in a fixed order, and the recording does not wait. The method below is about the thirty seconds before each recording, because that is where those marks are actually won.
Three parts, about forty minutes, forty-two marks.
The sub-test is the same for all twelve professions. Every recording is played once, you write while you listen, and the answers go on the question paper or, in the computer-delivered test, into the boxes on screen.
Part A
Two consultations of about five minutes · 12 gaps each · 24 marks
A health professional and a patient, and a page of notes with gaps under headings: presenting complaint, history, medication, plan. You fill each gap with the word or short phrase you hear, one to three words, in the form it was spoken. A short reading time is given before each recording.
The notes follow the recording in order. If you have missed a gap, the recording has moved on; so must you.
Part B
Six workplace extracts of about a minute · one three-option question each · 6 marks
Handovers, team briefings, a phone call, a manager explaining a new procedure. Each extract has one question, usually about purpose or the main point, and the recording pauses between extracts so you can read the next question.
Six marks that cost six minutes. A B needs four of them.
Part C
Two presentations or interviews of about five minutes · six four-option questions each · 12 marks
A clinician talking about their work, a researcher describing a study, an interview about a new service. The questions ask for opinion, reason, attitude and detail, and they come in the order of the talk. The recording does not stop while you answer.
Part C is IELTS Listening Section 4 with a healthcare subject and a fourth option. The same habits apply.
The marking
42 raw marks → a scale of 0 to 500 · Grade B is 350
One mark per item, no penalty for a wrong answer. In Part A a minor spelling error is accepted if the word is unmistakable, and British and American spellings are both fine, which is more forgiving than Reading Part A. Changing the form of the word, or adding one, is not.
Twenty-two in Part A and four in Part B, and Part C only has to find a handful. That is the shape of a B.
What to do before each recording, and what to do when it runs.
There is no rewind, so every method here is about the seconds before the audio starts. Used well, the reading time turns a gap from a word you must catch into a word you are expecting.
| Part | Before the audio | While it runs | The trap |
|---|---|---|---|
| A | Read the headings, then every gap, and label each one in your head: number, symptom, body part, drug, job, time. Notice which gaps have a unit or a word after them, because that word tells you what to listen for. | Keep your eyes on the next gap, not the one you just filled. Write what you hear, in the form you hear it; do not translate “six weeks” into “6/52” or a job into your own words. If a word is unfamiliar, write it as it sounds and move on. | The correction. Patients say “a month, no, six weeks” and the notes want six weeks. Numbers, dates and durations are corrected more often than anything else. And the gap you chase: three seconds spent on a missed word costs the next one too. |
| B | Read the question and the three options in the pause, and decide what the extract is about from the question stem alone: a change, a problem, a request. | Listen for the main point rather than for option words. Speakers in Part B usually state what they want at the end, after the detail, so hold your decision until the extract finishes. | An option that repeats a phrase you heard. The speaker mentioned it, and it is not the point. The correct option paraphrases the whole extract. |
| C | Read all six questions in the reading time and underline the key noun in each, so you know what signals the next question is coming. The order is fixed. | Track which question is live. When you hear the key noun of the next one, the previous question is over, whatever you have written. Answer on the speaker’s attitude words: “what surprised us”, “the real difficulty was”, “I was sceptical at first”. | Losing your place. One missed question in Part C often becomes three, because the candidate is still listening for question two while the speaker is answering four. Move on the moment the next key noun arrives. |
The habit under all three. Predict, then confirm. Every gap and every question can be half-answered from the paper before the audio starts: what type of word, what kind of point. The recording then confirms or corrects a guess, which is far easier than catching a word from nothing.
One consultation, ten gaps, one hearing.
A GP and a patient with a cough, written to do what real Part A recordings do: a corrected number, a drug you may not know, a job that is not a place, and a plan delivered fast at the end.
One consultation and ten gaps, on the pattern of the real twelve. The script is below, folded away. The point of the exercise is to hear it once, so do not read it first.
- Read the notes for thirty seconds, as the test allows, and decide for each gap what kind of word is coming: a number, a symptom, a drug, a job.
- Have someone read the script to you once, at a natural pace, without stopping. If nobody is about, record it on your phone in one take and play it back once. Fill the gaps as you listen.
- Alone with no recording? Open the script, read it once at speed, close it, and fill the notes from memory. Not the same skill, but the nearest thing a page can offer.
- Check. The feedback under each gap says why that word, and what the recording did to make it hard.
The script, for the reader
DoctorCome in, Mr Reeve, take a seat. What can I do for you today?
PatientIt’s this cough. It’s been going on for, I was going to say a month, but it must be six weeks now. Since the middle of July.
DoctorSix weeks. Is it there all day, or does it come and go?
PatientIt’s worse at night, definitely. I’m fine most of the day, then I lie down and it starts. My wife has moved into the spare room.
DoctorAnd are you bringing anything up?
PatientA bit in the mornings. Clear, mostly. Nothing coloured, nothing with blood in it. I did check.
DoctorGood. Any fever, sweats, weight loss?
PatientNo fever now. I had a chest infection at the start of July, the pharmacist gave me something for it, and I thought it had cleared. But the cough never really went.
DoctorAny wheezing, or tightness in the chest?
PatientNow and again I get a wheeze, if I’ve been rushing up the stairs. Not tightness, exactly.
DoctorDo you smoke?
PatientI gave up ten years ago. Twenty a day before that, for about fifteen years.
DoctorAnd what do you do for work?
PatientI’m a warehouse supervisor. It’s dusty, I suppose, but it’s been dusty for twelve years and I’ve never had a cough like this.
DoctorAre you on any regular medication?
PatientJust the blood pressure tablet. Ramipril. I started it in, er, May, I think. Yes, May.
DoctorMay. And anything over the counter?
PatientA cough mixture from the chemist, which does nothing. And I’ve been sleeping propped up on three pillows, which helps a bit.
DoctorAny allergies that you know of?
PatientPenicillin brings me out in a rash. That’s the only one.
DoctorRight. Let me have a listen to your chest. That sounds clear to me, which is reassuring. A couple of things. First, ramipril is well known for causing a dry cough in some people, and the timing fits: started in May, coughing since July. So I’d like to switch you to a different blood pressure tablet and see what happens. Second, given the smoking history, I’m going to arrange a chest X-ray, just to be thorough, and a breathing test with the nurse, which is called spirometry. And third, I want to see you again in three weeks.
PatientThree weeks. And in the meantime?
DoctorKeep a note of the nights you cough and the nights you don’t. And if you cough up any blood, or you get breathless when you are resting, come back straight away.
The consultation was written for this drill. It is language practice, not clinical guidance.
One handover, one question, and the option that repeats what you heard.
A ward handover I wrote at Part B length, printed here because a page cannot play it. Read it once at speaking pace, then answer before you look at the explanation.
The extract
NurseBed twelve is Mrs Adeyemi, seventy-one, day two after a hip replacement. She’s been comfortable on the regular analgesia, mobilised to the chair with the physio this morning, and her obs are all fine. The one thing to watch is her fluids. She’s drinking, but not much, and her output has been on the low side since lunchtime, so I’ve started a fluid chart. If it’s still low by the evening round, let the doctor know rather than waiting for the morning. Her daughter is coming in at six and wants to talk about discharge; I’ve said it’s likely to be Thursday but that it depends on the physio.
The question
The nurse is mainly concerned that the patient
- Ais in pain despite her regular analgesia.
- Bmay not be taking in enough fluid.
- Cis unlikely to be discharged on Thursday.
- B “The one thing to watch is her fluids” is the sentence the whole handover is built around, and the instruction that follows, the fluid chart and the evening call, belongs to it.
- A Analgesia is mentioned, and the word is on the recording, but the nurse says she is comfortable on it. An option that reuses a word you heard is the standard Part B distractor.
- C Discharge is mentioned as likely Thursday and dependent on the physio. That is a caveat, not a concern, and “unlikely” goes further than anything said.
- The habit Part B speakers signal the main point: “the one thing to watch”, “what I need from you is”, “the reason I’m calling”. Listen for the signal, and the option follows.
Any recording with captions can become a marked exercise.
OET publishes sample tests, and you should do all of them once, properly. After that the supply runs out, and the answer is to build your own from material that sounds like Part C.
Find a talk with real captions
A recorded lecture, a clinician interview, a health podcast with a transcript
University channels, professional bodies and public health broadcasters publish talks with subtitle files that were written by a person, not generated. Five to ten minutes on a healthcare subject that is not your own specialism is the closest thing to a Part C recording.
Automatically generated captions are wrong on exactly the words that matter. Look for a transcript or an uploaded subtitle file.
Load it into the listening builder
Paste the link, add the subtitle file, get a gap-fill and a true-or-false set
The listening builder on this site turns a video and its own .srt or .vtt file into a marked exercise from that exact recording. It runs in your browser and nothing is uploaded. Play the video once, answer, and check.
Build the exercise, then close the page and wait a day before you take it. You will have forgotten the gaps and remembered the subject, which is the right way round.
Rehearse once-only listening
The four IELTS Listening tests on this site, played once, no pausing
The IELTS Listening tests here are not OET, but Section 4 of each is a five-minute talk with completion questions, heard once, which is the Part C discipline without the healthcare vocabulary. Use them for the habit of moving on.
Do a Section 4 once a week with the rule that you never pause. The score matters less than whether you kept your place.
Part A is prediction. Parts B and C are keeping your place.
Both are habits, and both show in a recording of you doing them. In a lesson I read the consultation, at a real consultation pace with the corrections and the hesitations real patients produce, and we mark the notes together: which gaps you predicted, which you chased, and which you wrote in a form that would have lost the mark.
Lessons are £20 for fifty minutes, one to one with a native British tutor, with a written report after each. The OET hub covers the other three sub-tests; the Reading page has the Part A skill this one shares, with the stricter spelling rule, and the Speaking page has the role-plays.