OET Reading uses authentic healthcare texts — clinical guidelines, policy documents, medical articles, and patient information sheets. It tests your ability to read quickly and purposefully: finding specific information, understanding the main argument of a passage, and making inferences from complex medical writing.

Part A of OET Reading is a research skill test — four short texts on a related theme, with 20 questions requiring fast, precise scanning. This is where time management is critical. Most candidates who struggle with Reading don't struggle because of vocabulary — they struggle because they read too slowly and run out of time before Part C, which carries the highest marks.

InSync's Reading preparation teaches skimming and scanning techniques adapted specifically to medical texts — not generic speed-reading advice, but targeted strategies for the structures and vocabulary that appear in healthcare documents. You'll also develop the clinical vocabulary range needed to process texts confidently without re-reading every sentence.

• Time-management strategies for all three parts
• Medical vocabulary development for clinical texts
• Inference and detail-identification techniques
• Authentic OET-style text practice with simulated answer keys

Download free reading guides

OET Writing is both the most predictable and the most demanding sub-test. You're given a set of case notes and asked to write a letter — typically a referral letter or discharge summary — to another healthcare professional. The format is always the same. The challenge is in the execution.

What OET examiners assess goes far beyond grammar. They look at purpose and suitability (is the information relevant and appropriately selected from the notes?), content (accuracy and completeness), conciseness and clarity (no padding, no unnecessary repetition), genre and style (professional medical letter register), and language (grammar, vocabulary, spelling).

The most common reason InSync students come to us after failing OET Writing elsewhere is not bad English — it is poor selection of information from the case notes, or writing in an inappropriate register. Many candidates either include too much irrelevant detail or omit critical clinical information that the receiving professional would need to act on.

InSync's 8 writing assignments with personalised correction from Shane Jordan address this directly. Each submission comes back with specific comments on every criterion OET examiners use, a supposed grade, and a Grade A sample letter so you can compare your writing to the standard you're aiming for. This level of expert feedback, repeated eight times across your preparation period, builds the kind of letter-writing instinct that can't come from a book alone.

• Case note analysis and information selection strategies
• Referral, transfer and discharge letter format and organisation
• 8 personally corrected writing assignments with supposed grades
• Grade A model letters for direct comparison

OET Speaking involves two role-plays with a trained interlocutor who plays the role of a patient or carer. You play yourself — a healthcare professional managing a clinical scenario. The role-plays are profession-specific: nurses do nursing scenarios, doctors do medical scenarios.

The five criteria examiners assess are: linguistic criteria (intelligibility, fluency, appropriateness of language, resources of grammar and expression) and clinical communication criteria (relationship building, understanding and incorporating the patient's perspective, providing structure, information gathering, and information giving). Notice that three of the five criteria are about clinical communication — not just English.

This is why many experienced nurses and doctors who speak English well still struggle with OET Speaking. They're conditioned to give information efficiently — but OET assesses whether you explore the patient's concerns, acknowledge emotions, and build rapport during a clinical interaction. That's a different skill set from clinical efficiency, and it requires deliberate practice with expert feedback.

InSync's speaking preparation runs through weekly live speaking fluency classes (free, 5 days a week), 6 assessed speaking assignments with detailed expert feedback, and dedicated role-play practice sessions with feedback mapped to OET's official assessment criteria. By the time you sit the exam, the format — and the communication approach it demands — will feel natural rather than performed.

• OET clinical communication criteria — taught and practised in depth
• 6 assessed speaking assignments with expert feedback
• Free speaking fluency classes — 5 days/week
• Role-play technique for each scenario type
• Patient-centred communication strategies for OET criteria