The reading section of the OET exam is for some the trickiest part of the whole exam. Part A in particular can be quite intimidating because of its very short time limit. To get through this part, the key strategy is to always be very conscious of time. The very first thing to do is of course to skim through the texts and read the titles in order to get an idea of which text is talking about what. The headlines often contain information on whom/what the text is about, where the information is from and how it might be relevant to the general topic. Also, it is a good way to see what type of information each text might contain. Sometimes, the texts are about a person’s personal experience with a disease or issue. Other times, it could be just a table containing statistics or other types of data. It could also be a health professional’s professional opinion, the description of an illness or disease, or even how to treat or manage a particular condition.

Once you have identified the subject of each text, you are ready to start answering some of the questions. Each time that a blank space comes up in the summary and answer sheet, you already know where the information that you are looking for is most likely going to be. You can then go straight to that text and skim through it quickly to get the information that you are looking for. Be careful when looking at data however! There can be some traps laid out for you. Really pay attention to the way that the questions are worded. “Adult men under 70” might be labelled as “males 18-69” in a text. You must make sure to understand what is being asked of you as well as what the text is actually telling you.

As always, you have been keeping a steady eye on your watch during this whole time. You notice that you have about one minute left and unfortunately, you know that there are still too many blanks on your paper for you to realistically hope to finish everything in time. Do not despair! It is now time to realize that the last points that you are going to scrape up are not going to come from finding the answers directly from the text. Read through the final questions and try to answer them either using your memory of the texts that you have just read or just common knowledge. Sometimes, all that the sentence is missing is just a preposition or an adjective which is an easy way to score an extra point or two. Fill in everything that you can and place your pencil down when they call the time, and be happy that you have accomplished all that you could.