OET Reading & Listening Skills Builder: All Professions

OET Reading & Listening Skills Builder: All Professions

Tom Fassnidge
Express Publishing (2020)

For many years, the Occupational English Test (OET) has cowered in the shadow of its wealthier, sexier and better-known sibling IELTS. For those new to the test, OET is a language proficiency test aimed at healthcare professionals across 12 disciplines such as medicine, podiatry or vet science. With the amalgamation of Cambridge and Boxhill (instigators of this innovative testing system) the format has become slicker, security tighter, and training more standardised, in other words OET has become ‘Cambridgized’. Fairly recent acceptance in the UK has also moved it closer to IELTS in terms of recognition.

Due to the recent nature of its global breakthrough, there has been a dearth of preparation materials for candidates until now, so it is a delight to encounter Express Publishing’s ‘Reading & Listening Skills Builder’ by Tom Fassnidge with medical advisers Dr Christopher Green and Dr Rebecca Winslow. A complementary text exists for listening and speaking skills.

The OET is a complex test. Candidates don’t choose it as an easier alternative to IELTS but because they feel committed to and reassured by the medical content. They require a wide range of complex, profession-specific language for the workplace and test preparation provides an avenue for this. Fassnidge’s textbook is, of necessity, equally complex. The array of linguistic sub-skills, medical content, test format explanations and test day tips provides a behemoth of a textbook, which can feel intimidating for teachers and students alike. However, it contains absolutely everything you will ever need to know about OET listening and reading and once it’s on your bookshelf you need look no further, whether you are a teacher designing a preparation programme or a candidate working alone.

The 10 units each have a subject focus. Some read as generic language textbook topics, ‘A day in the life..’ or ‘The Mind’ while others have the reassurance of professional practice like ‘Infectious Diseases’ or ‘Training and Best Practice’. It is a minor niggle, but a professional tone across the topic choice, would be preferable.

In headers, each unit lists clear objectives to relate exercises to different parts of the test. One difficulty for any OET textbook writer is the range of testing types covered by the actual test. For those who have not encountered OET, test elements in these skills can be summarised as in Table 1.

Table 1. OET test elements

In explaining the content of each element, Fassnidge’s text is often quite dense. A successful candidate for OET aims for a B pass or CEFR C1 equivalent, but a beginner in week 1 of a formal programme or self-directed learning may be a band below this and find some of the explanations perplexing. For example, in the introduction, he describes the test orientation as follows:

‘In both subtests Part A has the most focus on specific details, Part C emphasises interpretation of meaning … and part B includes elements of both these approaches’ (p.6).

‘Parts A and C each contain recordings of about 5 minutes each and part B contains 6 recordings of around one minute each’.

A new test taker embarking on their OET journey, may find this verbosity fairly incomprehensible and the layout could be improved by a tabular format or some judicious bullet-pointing. Having said that, the content page is a work of art. Here it is made clear exactly which A, B and C matches each test element, how each skillset and topic is related, and which texts and audios are test standard.

Once into the units themselves there is a lot to like. The material has an in-your-face, up-to-the-minute feel which abounds in images of i-phones, e-files, anti-bullying notices, medical periodicals and even a sample article on boot camps for internet-addicted Chinese youth. Something particularly accessible is the relation of materials to real world, workplace scenarios. For example, in one unit, the reader imagines they are preparing a research presentation on asthma. This gives a clear purpose to extracting relevant information from assorted short texts. In the listening unit the scenario is a training observation wherein trainees attend a patient consultation, MDT meetings and a lecture. This almost adds a storyline to the dissonant elements and makes further sense of the test format.

The book is designed for in-class or self-study (with a partner) and never loses sight of its ultimate test-day aims. Activities are time-managed throughout (‘Take a maximum of 2 minutes to…’) extracts cover all 12 professions and there are several complete test-length texts and audios including a 5-minute lecture by a cardiologist on ‘Heart Monitoring Apps’ and a full written text on ‘Emotional Support for Animals’. The slow build in complexity of text and task is well designed and provides a step-by-step foundation in both reading and listening skills from newby to test-ready candidate.

The audio is on CD and may require a hunt around for a plug in CD drive. Obsolescence is increasingly problematic in teaching technology and I welcomed the accompanying Digibook. Although there is no additional material beyond the book, it does have digital audio. However, I was dismayed to find this expires in less than a year and if I was to use this online in class, the irritating blinking owl image on the website could well result in techno-rage!

Overall, this is an excellent step-by-step introduction to skills needed for a complex and challenging test. Fassnidge will save teachers considerable footwork, guiding them through a minefield of skills and contexts. Candidates often identify their main deficiency as specialist vocabulary and this could be emphasised more clearly in textbook units. Better still, perhaps this is a new textbook project waiting for Tom Fassnidge.

Meg Shovelton is a Senior Teacher at Waikato Institute of Technology in Hamilton, NZ. Her areas of professional interest are language assessment and EAP.