Listening Part A: An Overview

Part A is a medical interview.

When the recording starts, use the time allowed to look through the headings carefully. There are no questions for Part A but rather headings under which you need to take notes.

The most common scenario is a doctor-patient interview, though it could also be a nurse patient interview or perhaps a different health professional interviewing a patient.

The headings will follow the course of the interview and your job will be to take as much relevant information as you can.

The structures of medical interviews are quite standardised, so to some degree you can predict the format, and a typical format is as follows:

1.   Current symptoms

2.   Past symptoms

3.   Personal history or details

4.   Family history or details

5.   Explanation of the illness

6.   Medication and treatment advice

Listening Subtest

“The topics of the Listening sub-tests are chosen carefully to be accessible to all candidates of the OET. They are of general medical interest and cover a wide variety of issues. The OET is a test of English, not of medical knowledge, and the test developers are careful in the test design to minimise areas where candidates may use prior knowledge rather than language skills to respond.

“Topics will vary from administration to administration and while some topics may include content that is familiar to one particular health practitioner’s area of experience and expertise, the language tasks and questions associated with the texts are designed to test language knowledge and ability, over and above, the candidate’s knowledge of that field. In other words, correct responses cannot be simply ‘predicted’ because a candidate has experience in that area. Listening texts are selected for their concentration of content of a general health literacy nature; elements that can be considered common across multiple professions.”

(From OET Listening Sub-test: Test Information PDF)

Health and Wellbeing Podcasts

These ABC Radio podcasts are excellent for practising your listening skills.

Dr. Norman Swan leads a team of reporters who cover all aspects of health, from lifestyle to complementary medicines to the most recent medical discoveries.

http://www.abc.net.au/health/video/tonic/default.htm?url=/health/video/clips/3318310.htm