How to improve OET speaking score

When preparing to take the OET, most candidates only worry about the speaking part in the last week of preparation.

It is important to take some time before the exam in order to understand how the OET speaking subsection is scored and how you can use this information to reach a passing score.

On the OET website you can find the Linguistic Criteria and also the Clinical Communication Criteria that will help you to perform well on the exam.

For the Linguistic Criteria you need to understand what is expected of you when it comes to:

- Intelligibility

- Fluency

- Appropriateness of Language

- Resources of Grammar and Expression

To learn more details about these items, feel free to access the official OET website on this page: https://oet.com/test/test-overview

For the Clinical Communication Criteria you must know how to perform well when it comes to:

- Relationship Building

- Understanding and Incorporating the patient's perspective

- Providing Structure

- Information Gathering

- Information Giving

If you don't speak English in a health care environment on a daily basis, you really need to take some time and thoroughly study the criteria above to know exactly what is expected of you on the day of the test.

After you have carefully studied each item of the criteria assessed, then it comes the time for you to take a look at the roleplay conversation cards. These cards are in the same model of the ones you will find on the day of the exam. You will not know exactly which topics you will face on the day of the test, but practicing before hand will give you the confidence that can make a huge difference on how you score on the OET Speaking part of the test.

As far as the speaking task goes, on the day of the exam you will have 3 minutes to prepare each of the speaking roleplay cards. During this 3-minute preparation, you can ask the interlocutor any questions that you may have about meaning or pronunciation of a word. Depending on the topic of the card they give you, during the preparation time you can even ask how you can address the interlocutor, thus saving time during the roleplay and helping you to prepare a more organized structure for speaking.

Remember that the roleplay is a dialogue, not a lecture. So, make sure you think of which questions you will ask when transitioning from one task to another.

Some sample questions you can ask are:

- Are you following me?

- Is it clear?

- Do you have any other questions?

Make sure you don't use the same questions over and over. Remember that you are being tested and assessed on how you would perform on a real conversation with a native English speaker, so make sure the conversation flows as smoothly as possible.

Remember that you are talking to another human being, not to a computer.

On the day of the OET speaking test you will not be allowed to use a cellphone, watch, or clock to control the time. For this reason, you should practice over and over the sample speaking roleplay cards so that you will know approximately how long it takes you to complete each task.

There are quite a few speaking roleplay tasks available on OET website, and if you google it you will find a lot more on the internet. You need to practice a lot before the day of the OET speaking part of the test to make sure you can get a high score.

If you need any help preparing for the OET exam, feel free to contact us.

Have a great day!

OET