Twenty answers in fifteen minutes, copied exactly, and then the slow half.
OET Reading is two tests wearing one name. Part A is a fifteen-minute hunt across four short texts, where every answer is a word or number lifted from the page and one wrong letter scores nothing. Parts B and C are forty-five minutes of judgement: what a memo is for, what a writer thinks, what “this” refers to. This page gives the shape, a method and a trap for each part, a Part A drill you can time, a Part B item worked, and the questions Part C actually asks.
Why this matters. Reading is the sub-test clinicians underestimate, because they read guidelines all day. The paper is the same for every profession, the texts are general healthcare rather than your specialism, and the two halves want opposite habits: Part A punishes anyone who reads properly, Part C punishes anyone who skims. Most of the marks a Grade B needs are in Part A, and Part A is a technique. The technique is below, and the drill is where it becomes reflex.
Three parts, one hour, forty-two marks.
Part A is timed on its own and collected before Parts B and C begin. Everything is answered on the paper, or typed in the computer-delivered test, and marked by people rather than by machine for Part A.
Part A
15 minutes · four short texts on one topic · 20 questions
Four texts labelled A to D, and at least one of them is usually a table or a chart. Three question types: matching, which asks which text contains a piece of information; sentence completion; and short answer. Every answer is a word, short phrase or number copied from the texts.
Exact copying is the whole game. A misspelt or altered answer scores zero, however well you understood.
Part B
Six short workplace texts of 100–150 words · one three-option question each
Memos, emails, policy extracts, notices, guideline snippets, meeting notes. The question asks what the text is for, who it is aimed at, or what one detail means in practice. Parts B and C share a single forty-five-minute block.
A Part B question is usually about purpose. The detail that distracts you is true; it is just not the answer to the question asked.
Part C
Two long texts of about 800 words · eight four-option questions each
Articles on healthcare topics of general interest, not your specialism. The questions follow the order of the text and ask for opinion, attitude, inference, purpose, and what a word or pronoun refers to. Sixteen marks, and the slowest reading on the paper.
The answer is always a paraphrase of something in the text. If an option repeats the text’s words, be suspicious of it.
The marking
42 raw marks → a scale of 0 to 500 · Grade B is 350
One mark per question, no penalty for a wrong answer, and the raw total is converted to the 500-point scale. OET does not publish a fixed conversion, and it moves a little between versions of the paper; the commonly cited figure is around thirty correct answers for a B.
The arithmetic that follows: eighteen of twenty in Part A, four of six in Part B, and Part C only has to supply the last eight or nine.
Two ways of reading, and knowing which one the part wants.
Part A is expeditious reading: scanning for a word, a number or a heading, and copying. Parts B and C are careful reading: understanding a whole text well enough to say what it is doing. Candidates who bring one habit to both parts lose marks in whichever part they were not built for.
| Part | What it is really testing | The method | The trap |
|---|---|---|---|
| A | Can you find a fact in the right text fast, and copy it without changing it? | Thirty seconds on the headings of A to D, so you know where each kind of information lives. Then read each stem for its key word, go to the likeliest text, scan for the word or its synonym, and copy. Matching questions first, because they teach you the texts; completions and short answers next. Never read a text from the top. | Understanding. The candidate who reads Text A properly is still on it at minute five. And the answer written from memory, with one letter changed, is a zero. |
| B | Can you tell what a workplace text is for, and what one line of it means for the people it is aimed at? | Read the question first, then the whole text once, then decide what it is doing: informing, instructing, reminding, warning. Match the option that names that job. If the question is about a detail, find the sentence and paraphrase it before you look at the options. | Two options that are true statements about the text. Only one answers the question. About a minute and a half per item, then move; the marks here are worth the same as Part C’s and cost less. |
| C | Can you follow an argument, and tell what the writer thinks from how they say it? | Read the eight questions first, because they map the text in order. Read paragraph by paragraph, and answer each question as its paragraph arrives. For opinion questions, find the evaluative words: “unfortunately”, “surprisingly”, “it is hard to see how”. For reference questions, read the sentence before the pronoun. | An option that quotes the text exactly. The correct option almost always paraphrases; the quoted one is usually a fact stated near the answer that does not answer the question. And the clock: leave thirty minutes for this part, which means leaving Part B at the fifteen-minute mark whatever it looks like. |
The clock. Part A’s fifteen minutes are fixed for you. The forty-five after that are yours to divide, and nobody warns you when Part B has eaten Part C’s share. Decide the split before the day: fifteen and thirty. A Part C text left half-read is eight marks gone at once.
Four texts, ten questions, seven and a half minutes.
Do it exactly as you would in the room: headings first, stems next, texts only ever to find something. Then read the feedback, which says where each answer was and what the wrong answer would have been.
Ten questions on four short texts, all on one topic, on the pattern of the real twenty. Everything is marked on this page; nothing is sent anywhere. The real Part A allows fifteen minutes for twenty questions, so give this one seven and a half, and note where you were when the time went.
Hypoglycaemia in adult inpatients: recognition
Hypoglycaemia in an adult with diabetes is defined as a capillary blood glucose below 4.0 mmol/L, whatever the symptoms. It is graded by what the patient can do, not by the reading. Mild: conscious, orientated, able to swallow and able to treat themselves. Moderate: conscious and able to swallow, but needing help from another person. Severe: unconscious, fitting, or too aggressive or drowsy to take anything safely by mouth.
Early symptoms are sweating, trembling, palpitations, hunger and tingling of the lips; later ones are confusion, drowsiness, slurred speech and unusual behaviour. Some patients, particularly those with long-standing diabetes, have impaired awareness and show no warning symptoms at all. Any inpatient found drowsy, confused or behaving out of character must have a capillary glucose checked before any other cause is assumed.
Treatment by severity
| Severity | Give | Then |
|---|---|---|
| Mild or moderate, co-operative | 15–20 g of fast-acting carbohydrate: four or five glucose tablets, 150–200 mL of fruit juice, or one and a half to two tubes of glucose gel | Recheck capillary glucose after 10–15 minutes. Repeat up to three times if still below 4.0 mmol/L |
| Moderate, unco-operative but able to swallow | One and a half to two tubes of glucose gel between the teeth and the gum, or 1 mg glucagon by intramuscular injection | Recheck after 10–15 minutes |
| Severe, unable to swallow | With IV access: 75–100 mL of 20% glucose over 15 minutes. Without: 1 mg glucagon IM. Glucagon may not work in patients who are malnourished, have liver disease or have been drinking alcohol | Recheck after 10 minutes and call for urgent medical review |
After the episode
Once the glucose is above 4.0 mmol/L and the patient has recovered, give a long-acting carbohydrate to prevent a recurrence: two biscuits, a slice of bread, a glass of milk, or the next meal if it is due. A patient who has received glucagon needs a larger portion, because glucagon works by emptying the liver’s store of glycogen.
Do not omit the next dose of insulin, but review its dose and timing with the diabetes team. Record the episode on the hypoglycaemia chart: the time, the readings before and after treatment, what was given, and the probable cause. Check capillary glucose every hour for the following four hours. Inform the medical team on the same shift, and refer to the diabetes inpatient team if there have been two or more episodes in 24 hours.
Causes and prevention on the ward
Most inpatient hypoglycaemia is preventable. The commonest causes are a missed or delayed meal after insulin has already been given, a smaller meal than usual, insulin timed to the drug round rather than to food, a reduction in steroid dose without a matching change in insulin, vomiting, and an acute illness that reduces appetite. Alcohol and a recent increase in activity also contribute.
To reduce the risk: co-ordinate insulin with meal delivery; make sure a hypo box is on every ward and checked weekly; agree an intravenous glucose plan with the medical team for any patient who is nil by mouth; and ask every patient with diabetes on admission whether they recognise their own warning signs. Patients with impaired awareness should have their target range relaxed and their checks increased.
The four texts were written for this drill in the style of a ward guideline. They are language practice, not clinical guidance, and must not be used as such.
One memo, one question, and why two of the options are true but wrong.
A workplace text I wrote at Part B length, with the kind of question Part B asks. Read the question, read the memo once, decide what the memo is for, and only then look at the options.
The text
To all ward staff: discharge lounge referrals from Monday 6 October
From next Monday, patients will no longer be sent to the discharge lounge by telephone. Instead, the ward must complete the electronic discharge lounge referral on the patient record before 10 a.m., confirming that the patient is medically fit, that their medication to take home has been ordered, and that transport has been booked. The lounge will accept a referral only when all three boxes are ticked. Patients who need oxygen, who are being nursed in isolation, or who need a hoist for transfers remain unsuitable for the lounge, as before. Opening hours are unchanged, 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. Please contact the lounge co-ordinator with any questions.
The question
The main purpose of the memo is to
- Aremind staff which patients are unsuitable for the lounge.
- Bexplain why the lounge’s opening hours have not changed.
- Ctell staff how referrals to the lounge must now be made.
- C The memo’s first sentence announces a change, and everything after it describes the new process: what to complete, by when, and what must be confirmed. That is the job the text is doing.
- A True: the memo does list unsuitable patients. But it says “as before”, which tells you this is background, not the point. A true detail is the classic Part B distractor.
- B The hours are mentioned, and they are unchanged, but no reason is given for that, so the memo cannot be explaining it. An option that goes further than the text is wrong even when it sounds plausible.
- The habit Name the text’s job in one word before reading the options: announce, instruct, remind, warn, request. Here the word is “instruct”, and only C is an instruction.
Five question shapes, and where the answer to each one hides.
Part C texts are long, but the sixteen questions follow the text in order, so each one has a home paragraph. What changes is what the question asks of that paragraph.
Attitude and opinion
“What is the writer’s view of…?” · “The writer suggests that…”
Look for the words that carry judgement rather than fact: “disappointingly”, “at last”, “it is tempting to conclude”, a rhetorical question, a “but” that reverses the previous sentence. The answer is a paraphrase of that judgement.
Habit: underline every evaluative word in the paragraph before you read the options.
Purpose
“Why does the writer mention…?” · “The example of X is used to…”
The question is not what the example says but what it is doing: supporting a claim, contradicting one, showing a limit. Read the sentence before the example, which is usually the claim it serves.
Habit: finish the sentence “the writer mentions this in order to…” in your own words, then find the option that matches.
Reference
“What does ‘this’ refer to in line…?”
A pronoun or a phrase such as “this approach” pointing backwards. The referent is almost always in the previous sentence, and it is often a whole idea rather than a single noun.
Habit: read the sentence before, replace the pronoun with each option, and keep the one that makes the sentence true.
Vocabulary in context
“The word ‘X’ in paragraph three is closest in meaning to…”
The word is chosen because its usual meaning is not the one in play. Work it out from the sentence, not from memory; the dictionary meaning is often one of the wrong options.
Habit: cover the word, read the sentence, and say what word you would have used.
Detail and inference
“According to paragraph two…” · “What can be inferred about…?”
The detail is there, reworded. The inference is one step beyond it, and no further: the option that needs two steps, or a fact from outside the text, is wrong.
Habit: for every option, ask “which sentence says this?” If you cannot point at one, it is not the answer.
Part A is a reflex. Part C is a reading habit.
The reflex is built by repetition under a clock: rerun the drill above until eighteen of twenty is your floor, then take official sample papers the same way. The habit is built by reading one healthcare article a day and asking, paragraph by paragraph, what the writer thinks and why they said it that way. In a lesson we do both against the clock, and I mark your Part A for the exact-copy errors you cannot see in your own writing.
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 Writing page has the letter, worked and marked, and the Listening page has the note-completion skill that Part A of that test shares with this one.