In this post we will talk about three reasonably common trick questions in Reading A that aim to find the best students. It is very easy to lose marks on these questions when you are rushing because they are very sneaky, but being aware of them can increase your chance of getting them correct.

1. Plural and singular
Text: “Screening mammograms are the best method for detecting breast cancer in the early stages”
Question: “The best method for detecting breast cancer in the early stages is …..?…..”
The text and the question sentences almost look identical, although obviously the order of information has changed. The other thing that has changed is that where the text used the plural verb “are” the answer has the singular verb “is”; therefore, we need to change the words “screening mammograms”, which is plural, into a singular form – the answer is “a screening mammogram”

2. Splitting up acronyms
Text: “25% of Australian adults are obese, with a body mass index (BMI) of 30 or higher”
Question: “Obesity is defined as a …..?….. index of greater or equal to 30”
The answer is obviously to do with body mass index, and as they have used the abbreviation BMI in the text we are allowed to use this for our answer. However, note that the question already has the word “index” written down, so writing “BMI” will be marked wrong, because you are saying “body mass index index”. The answer is therefore “body mass”, and we do not use an abbreviation.

3. Fractions and percentages
Text: “When treated with both a statin and ezetimibe, the rates of STEMI were lowered by 40%”
Question: “Combination lipid-lowering therapy was associated with a two …..?….. reduction in myocardial infarction incidence”
As has been mentioned in previous posts, for all reading you should be comfortable changing between simple fractions and percentages (1/2, 1/3, 1/4, 1/5, 1/10). This question type revolves around being comfortable with these. The answer in the text is 40%, but of course we can’t put this in our answer because “two 40%” does not make any sense. Instead, we have to convert this to a fraction – 40% is two-fifths, so the answer would be “fifths”.

26 August 2017

James

The most simple sentence structure in the English language is:
Noun + verb.
If the noun is doing the action described by the verb, the noun is known as a subject.E.g. The doctor consulted. (“doctor” is the subject of this sentence).

If the action described by the verb is being done to someone or something, the recipient of the action is known as the object. We add this noun after the verb:
E.g. The doctor consulted the patient. (“doctor” is the subject and “patient” is the object).
This sentence structure is:
Subject + verb + object

Using the passive voice allows us to do two useful things in healthcare letters:
1. Focus on the object of a sentence by putting it first.
2. Save space by leaving out the subject (that is, the noun actually doing the action).

The sentence structure in usage #1 is:
Object + Passive verb + subject./span>
E.g. The patient was consulted by the doctor.
This allows us to focus the reader’s attention on the patient, rather than the doctor, by putting them first in the sentence. This is useful in discharge and referral letters, because the patient is the most important focus of the letter.

The sentence structure in usage #2 is:
The patient was consulted.
This is very useful if the person or thing that did the action isn’t as important as the person who received the action. It also allows us to leave out irrelevant information. For example, “the patient was admitted on 27/08/17” is more concise than “the patient was admitted on 27/08/17 by a doctor”. It doesn’t really matter who admitted the patient, so it’s best to leave this information out when doing the OET Writing Test.

Overall, passive voice can be a very useful tool in improving your letter in the OET Writing Test!

26 August 2017

Anna Brzeska