Your palms are sweaty, your heart’s racing… and you stare, dumbfounded, as your mind goes blank.

To avoid a situation like this happening in your OET speaking exam, you should be prepared for what to expect and how you should respond. The roleplay that you are given will require you to use appropriate language and phrases to do one or more of the following things:

1. Assess the patient, the patient’s background or the current situation. This is often what you do in the opening section of the speaking – you find out (i.e. assess) what it is that the patient wants!
2. Assure the patient about their particular health condition, their family member’s illness or an upcoming operation, etc. The patient is anxious and you need to calm them down… what do you say? You should use empathic language, exhibiting your understanding to the patient.
3. Advise the patient about lifestyle changes, how to manage their diabetes/health disease or what are the harms/benefits. Here you need to make appropriate suggestions for the patient’s situation.
4. Arrange a follow-up appointment or referral, if appropriate to the situation.  You are showing the patient that you are taking immediate action to help them.

Now it’s up to you to carefully consider each of these types of speaking tasks and come up with some appropriate sentences, questions or phrases that can help you communicate these things to the patient.

-Carol, OET Teacher of SLS