Do you find the Part A OET reading task too hard? You probably don’t have a good system for approaching the test.

This task can seem impossible. You have 15 minutes to read four texts and then answer more than 20 questions. And you have to get the grammar correct too!

I once had a student who had below than average spoken English, and she had a lot of trouble with the writing task too. However, unlike the rest of the class, she found Part A to be naturally easy. Even though English was her second language, she could finish any Part A task I threw at her with minutes to spare. Why was she so good at it?

This was because she had a systematic approach to handling the test – and to do well in the test, you will need to internalize this approach so that it becomes automatic. How do you do this?

Step 1:

Do not read the entire texts! You need to rapidlyscan and skim for certain details that will help you characterize each of the four texts so that you know where to find you answer.

These details include things like:

• Headings
• Author
• Year
• Location

Now you need to quickly give a unique personality to each of the texts so that you can remember which one is which. For example: “Text 1: Spanish study from 1999; Text 2: Statistics from 2005; Text 3: Study by O’Neill et al.; Text 4: Australian Guidelines for approaching asthma”.

Step 2:

Now keywords in the gap-fill will tell you immediately which text you need to find your answer from. The first sentence might read: “Asthma is a common condition. In Spain, ­­_____________ of people suffer from asthma.”Which text are you going to get your answer from?

For more tips on how to develop your systematic approach, feel free to contact any of the teachers at SLS – and don’t forget, practice makes perfect!

Jaime