Top resources for Occupational English Test reading practice

People ask me all the time if I have any resources for the reading section of the Occupational English Test. It always pains me to say no, I only have access to the same free tests that are available to everyone on the OET website here. I would advise anyone to try to practise as much as possible with mock reading tests. However, I understand that there are simply not enough tests out there to properly revise and practise with!

Don’t worry though, all is not lost! I have made a list of lots of free resources that are similar to the types of things you will need to read in the OET reading test. I hope with the resources here you can successfully study and prepare for the exam. Also please remember that the reading (and the listening) sub-tests are NOT profession-specific. This means that if you are a doctor, you may have to read texts related to nursing or dentistry. Or if you are a podiatrist the reading test may include texts related to occupational therapy or pharmacy. You are not expected to have any knowledge for these different fields, but you will be expected to be familiar with the vocabulary. For that reason I have tried to include lots of resources from a wide range of sources.

This is a long article, so if you’re planning on reading it from start to finish, maybe make yourself a cup of tea! Otherwise I’m hoping you can easily skip to the bits you need.

General reading resources to improve medical vocabulary

It’s important to read something related to healthcare in English as often as possible. I have based the list below on the resources recommended on the OET website and included some of my own which I think are generally helpful to read and gain vocabulary and practice. I know a lot of students read BBC health, but in my opinion these articles are good but a little bit too easy if you are aiming for an A or B in the OET. The following resources will help push your reading to the next level!

• The Guardian Health
  • A free online UK newspaper with high quality journalism, however sometimes it can be a little too political
• The British Medical Journal: free
  • The “BMJ” is one of the biggest medical journals in the UK, however most of it is behind a pay wall. This list from pubmed shows all the “sub journals” which are completely free to access. Just pick whichever you think looks most interesting!
• ABC news: medicine
  • This is the subset of the Australian news specifically around medical topics.
• AOTA Occupational Therapy blog
  • This is a collection of posts from a USA-based occupational therapy organisation. Some articles are very specific to the USA, but you can scroll through and find lots of great articles for reading practice

Useful resources for Part A

Part A is a particularly difficult section of the reading sub-test. It requires you to read 4 different short texts and answer 20 questions in only 15 minutes. This can be quite a tricky task and requires practice. There is good news though. The main types of texts they use in part A are guidelines and instructions. There are lots of this sort of material available for free on the internet! Also, 1 out of the 4 texts is always a table or a flowchart, so make sure you are familiar with reading this sort of text. Remember, actual guidelines are often very long, but in the exam they will just extract 1 or 2 paragraphs.

You can find a selection of guidelines at these websites:

Medicine guidelines

• Salisbury NHS Foundation trust
  • This is a UK hospital that has published all of their guidelines and protocols on the internet. The guidelines are written in a similar way to the OET materials
• Royal Children’s Hospital Melbourne
  • This site has an A-Z of guidelines in exactly the style that is often seen in the OET reading exam. Obviously they are specific to paediatrics, but paediatrics could be used in this context in the exam
• National Institute for Health and Care Excellence
  • Otherwise known as the NICE guidelines, this is produced by the UK government and provides protocols and guidelines for everything you can think of! They are pretty in-depth, but are very useful if you wanted to look up something specific to your area of interest!
• Good Medical Practice (Australia)
  • This isn’t guidelines as such, it is a code of professional conduct for doctors in Australia. This is useful for gaining vocabulary about general guidelines, and is useful to read if you are considering working as a doctor in Australia (or the UK, Good Medical Practice UK is a very similar document).

Nursing guidelines

• Emergency Nurse Protocols and Guidelines
  • This is an excellent set of guidelines from the College of Emergency Nursing Australia. The “standing order” documents include medication tables very similar to those used in the OET.
• Good Nursing Practice (UK)
  • This is a similar document to that provided for doctors. It does not include clinical guidelines but instead ethical and behavioural guidelines. It is useful both for vocabulary practice and to prepare for working in the UK

Other health professionals guidelines

• Faculty of Dental Surgery Guidelines
  • This is probably more in-depth than you are likely to see in the OET, but have a look at a few of these if you are a dentist and/or if you want a challenge!
• Dartmouth Radiography Guidelines
  • These are very technical, but are in a nice visual style
• ParkinsonNet MDT guidelines
  • This is a site for Parkinson’s disease, but has links to guidelines for physiotherapists, occupational therapists, speech and language therapists and dietitians. The guideline documents are VERY long, so it is important to look at the table of contents and choose 1 or 2 pages to read

Useful resources for Part B

To be honest, the type of texts used in part B are very similar to what you might see in Part A. Part B might also include “memos”: essentially emails sent to members of staff with updates. They also may include excerpts from instruction manuals.

For obvious reasons nobody publishes internal emails on the internet! However, this UK hospital publishes a staff newsletter which has some similar short articles:
York Teaching Hospitals Staff Newsletter

This medical equipment company publishes lots of instruction manuals. Don’t spend too much time on these, but I think it would be helpful to read a few paragraphs of 1 or 2:
Equipment Manuals

Useful Resources for Part C

Part C involves reading tests that are considerably longer than the other sections. It requires you to infer meaning from more complex paragraphs. To practise for this section you need to read texts that involve opinion and argument as opposed to just facts. I have gathered a selection of places you can find free high quality opinion pieces similar to those used for Part C

• The Guardian Health: Opinion
  • This is the same link as above in general resources. It is a British newspaper with free online articles. If you go to this page and scroll down, you can see articles under the heading “Opinion” with orange titles. These are specific opinion pieces on many healthcare topics and it is perfect for Part C preparation.
• Australian Medical Association: Opinion
  • This has useful articles written by Australian doctors.
• The Nursing Times: Opinion
  • This has great opinion articles related to nursing in the UK. Unfortunately you can only access 1 free article every 30 days. However, if you are willing to give them your email address you can get unlimited access for 1 week for free, which is plenty of time to find lots of interesting articles to download and study with.
    (They ask for lots of info to sign up for the week’s trial,but it is fine if you are not a UK nurse. I tested it putting that I was an overseas doctor and it worked perfectly!)
• Good.Physio blog
  • This is a blog by a team of Australian physiotherapists. It includes a lot of patient advice, but also a lot of opinion articles in a different style to what you might see in a newspaper

Useful Practice Tests for Speed-reading and comprehension practice

It is useful to practise reading lots of texts. However it is also very important to practise reading difficult texts quickly and answering questions about them, as that is what you will do in the exam. Although there are not many practice OET reading papers, there are lots and lots of practice tests for other exams. Here are some good websites with free practice IELTS and TOEFL reading tests. The texts are slightly different to the OET, but the skills you need are exactly the same!

• British council IELTS practice
• Exam English academic IELTS practice
• IELTS essentials practice
• IELTS-exam.net practice
• Exam English TOEFL

How To Use These Resources Wisely

Everyone has their own way to study, no 1 way is the correct way! However, this is what I advise my students:

• Make time to read something related to medical English every single day, even if it is just 5 minutes!
• Set aside time to specifically study for the reading sub-test, especially if you have scored low in the past
• Pick some resources from the above list, select a few paragraphs and see how quickly you can read and understand them, imagining you would have to answer questions on them
• After reading more carefully, note down any new/difficult vocabulary. If there’s any grammar you don’t understand – look it up!
• Try to get hold of as many practice OET tests as you can, and practise using the exam timings
• If you have a shortage of OET tests, do a few academic IELTS/TOEFL free tests to the official timings

Disclaimer

I have linked to many guidelines and medical documents in this post. These are intended to guide medical English study only. I cannot take responsibility for the contents of any external websites I have linked to. Nothing in the above constitutes medical advice.

If you’re still reading…

Well done! You’ve made it to the end! I hope you have found this post useful! Let me know what you think in the comments! Also let me know if there’s anything else you’d like to see!