OET Listening: the audio plays once. How to prepare for Parts A, B and C

The OET Listening subtest takes about 40 minutes and has 42 questions in three parts. The recordings are played once. There is no replay, and no pausing, apart from the short gaps built into the recording to let you read the questions and write. Everything about preparing for Listening follows from that one fact: you have to be ready for each question before the audio reaches it, and you have to recover quickly when you miss something.

Like Reading, the Listening paper is the same for every profession. The recordings are set in healthcare and feature a range of accents from countries where English is spoken, so the skill tested is understanding spoken professional English, not specialist knowledge. The structure below describes the test at the time of writing; OET publishes the current structure and sample recordings at occupationalenglishtest.org.

Part A: two consultations, note completion

Part A is two recorded consultations between a healthcare professional and a patient, each about five minutes long, with 12 questions on each. The questions are gaps in a set of notes about the consultation, in the order the information comes up, and you fill them with the words you hear. The gap might be a symptom, a duration, a medication, a concern the patient raises, or something the professional advises.

This part rewards preparation in the reading time before each recording. Read the notes, see what kind of word each gap needs, and mark the headings so you can track where the conversation has got to. When the audio starts, the headings are your map. If you miss a gap, leave it and follow the headings to the next one; chasing a missed answer while the recording moves on is how one lost mark becomes three. Spelling is assessed, so write the word you heard as accurately as you can, and if you are unsure, write what you heard rather than nothing.

Part B: six short workplace extracts

Part B has six short recordings, each around a minute, of the kind of exchange that happens in a healthcare workplace: a handover, a team briefing, a conversation about a policy, a phone call. Each has one multiple-choice question with three options, about the main point, the purpose, or a detail.

These are quick, and there is a short pause before each to read the question and options. The usual trap is an option that repeats a phrase from the recording but is not what the speaker meant. Listen for the answer to the question as asked, which is often about why someone is speaking rather than what they said.

Part C: two presentations or interviews

Part C is two longer recordings, each about five minutes, in which a healthcare professional gives a presentation or is interviewed about an aspect of their work. There are six multiple-choice questions on each, with three options, and they test understanding of opinion, attitude and argument: what the speaker thinks, why they give an example, what they conclude.

The questions follow the order of the recording, and there is time at the start to read them. Reading them properly matters more here than anywhere else in the paper, because once you know what each question is asking you can listen for the relevant section and ignore the rest. Options in Part C are often paraphrases, so the words in the correct option will usually not be the words the speaker used.

The habits that protect your score

• Use every reading gap. The pauses before each part are not rest. Read the questions, predict the answers, and decide what to listen for.
• Never chase a missed answer. A gap left blank costs one mark. Trying to recover it while the audio moves on can cost the next two.
• Write while you listen. In Part A especially, there is no time to listen first and write afterwards. Note the word as you hear it.
• Check the answer sheet at the end. There is time after the recordings finish to review what you have written. Use it for spelling and for any gap you can fill from memory.
• Practise with one hearing only. Replaying a practice recording teaches you nothing about the real test. Play it once, mark it, then listen again to understand what you missed.

Accents and speed

The recordings use speakers from a range of English-speaking countries, at a natural conversational pace. If one accent is harder for you than others, the fix is exposure: listen to healthcare content, interviews and podcasts in that accent until it stops being an obstacle. The test does not slow down for anyone, so the aim is to be comfortable at normal speed before the day.

Practising Listening

Clodia's Listening tests follow the three-part structure, play each recording once with the built-in pauses, and are marked with the same answer-key approach as the real paper. The results show which part and which question type you are losing marks on, so you can tell whether the problem is Part A note-taking speed or Part C inference and work on that one thing.

The official sample tests on occupationalenglishtest.org are recorded by OET and are the best indication of the accents and pace to expect. Sit at least one under single-play conditions before your test date.