As promised, here's a blog post about what you can read to improve your reading Part A skills in the OET. I'm sure you've heard your teacher say, don't just read and do the practice tests, but read healthcare articles in general, but it's often hard to know exactly what can help.
In this blog post, we'll take a look at some ideas for how you can improve your skills for the OET Reading Part A sub-test.
What is OET Reading Part A?
Before we jump into the 'what you can do part?', let's just recap what OET reading part A is about. This is the part of the test where your skimming and scanning skills come into focus.
It's designed to replicate expeditious reading - that's speedy reading - of the kind you do when you have a patient in front of you and you just need to check your notes to get some information, such as the correct dosage, or to check the indication.
It's timed, so you only get 15 minutes in the test for this part of the OET reading.
You'll get 4 texts on the same topic and the first set of questions asks you which text contains information about certain things.
Once you've done this, you can move on to the next parts, which are either short answer questions, or complete the sentence questions. You can find out more about strategy and take a look at some OET Reading Part A practice questions here.
Read Patient Information Leaflets (PILs)
One place you can spend some time practising is on a website called: https://www.medicines.org.uk/
Here, you'll find a complete list of medicines that can be prescribed in the UK. Take a look in particular at the Patient Information Leaflets known as PILs. Here's an example of one for paracetamol.
Use the information given to you, including the titles and figures to test yourself. For example:
See if you can quickly find the dosage for children under 10.
What are the signs of having an allergic reaction?
What should a patient do if they take warfarin?
I'll include the answers below, but why not test your friends and colleagues who are also taking the OET? There are so many medicines to choose from, you can each take one sample and write questions for each other. Time yourself to see who can find the correct answer the fastest and then ask them how they got the answer. This will help you identify the skimming and scanning skills you need for the OET reading test.
Read information about diseases and conditions
The OET reading part A also often describes a particular disease or condition before going on to talk about treatments, so it's a good idea to spend some time practising here too.
A useful website to help you is: https://bestpractice.bmj.com/
You can use the search tool to look up a condition, it can be anything, for example, Pneumocystis jirovecii pneumonia!
Try to make up some questions to test yourself and your colleagues.
You may not be able to access all the information without having a log in, but you can certainly practise your skimming and scanning skills, using the words in bold and headings and charts to guide you. These are all great skills to have in the OET Reading Part A.
Another website
Here's another website you can browse through to help you build your OET reading Part A skills. It's called: https://www.nice.org.uk/ and is the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence.
It's also a UK website that you can use to search for medication or diseases. Here's what comes up for pneumonia.
You can look through the guidelines, for example, and then try to summarise them. Notice how they are written in bullet point form to help you. Use these kinds of details now and in the test to guide you.
Here are some questions that you can test yourself with.
Antibiotic therapy should not usually be used if the C‑reactive protein concentration is less than __________
How is the CRB65 score calculated? ______________________
What should be considered for patients with a CRB65 score of 0? _______________
Think like an examiner!
Write something similar and test your colleagues too! By writing and creating your own questions, you begin to think like an examiner, and that will help you when it comes to answering your own questions in the OET reading part A.
Good luck! Let me know how it goes.
If you'd like more tips and strategies, why not take a look at my on-demand course, OET Insights, which is a self-access course. All the video lessons are pre-recorded so you can work through them in your own time. Here's a discount code for you!
Answer Key
See if you can quickly find the dosage for children under 10. It should not be used for children under 10)
What are the signs of having an allergic reaction? A rash and breathing problems.
What should a patient do if they take warfarin? Tell their doctor.
Antibiotic therapy should not usually be used if the C‑reactive protein concentration is less than 20 mg/litre.
How is the CRB65 score calculated? by giving 1 point for each of prognostic feature given:
What should be considered for patients with a CRB65 score of 0? home‑based care