OET Reading: Three Parts in 60 Minutes

The big picture

• OET Reading (60 min, 42 items)
  • Part A — Fast text-matching · ~15 min · 4 short texts
  • Part B — Short workplace texts · gist/detail
  • Part C — Two longer passages · deeper meaning
  • Generic healthcare — Same for all professions

Three parts, 60 minutes, healthcare texts

OET Reading has three parts, about 42 questions in 60 minutes, on generic healthcare topics. Part A is strictly timed (~15 minutes) and speed-based; Parts B and C give you the remaining time for shorter and longer texts.

Part A — scan four texts fast

Part A gives four short healthcare texts and questions (matching, sentence completion, short answer) that you answer by quickly locating information across the texts. It's a skimming-and-scanning race — find the right text and spot, don't read everything.

Parts B & C — read for meaning

Part B has short workplace texts (memos, guidelines, notices) with one multiple-choice question each — catch the main point or detail. Part C has two longer passages testing deeper comprehension, opinion and attitude, so read those more carefully.

Manage the clock across parts

Because Part A is separately timed, finish Parts B and C without overspending on any one question. Answer what's clear first, flag the tricky ones, and never leave a blank — there's no penalty for wrong answers.

Test yourself before you move on

Re-reading a note feels like learning and produces almost none. The retrieval below is what actually builds the memory, so cover the map above and answer these from memory — out loud or written down, not in your head, because "I know this" is the feeling that fails under exam pressure.

1. Without looking: what is Part A, and how does it connect to OET Reading (60 min, 42 items)?
2. Without looking: what is Part B, and how does it connect to OET Reading (60 min, 42 items)?
3. Without looking: what is Part C, and how does it connect to OET Reading (60 min, 42 items)?
4. Without looking: what is Generic healthcare, and how does it connect to OET Reading (60 min, 42 items)?

Anything you could not produce is the part of this note you have not learned yet — regardless of how familiar it felt while reading. Re-read only that node, then re-test the whole set. Testing the whole set matters: recalling one idea in isolation is easier than recalling it among 4 competing ones, which is the situation the exam actually puts you in.

When to come back to this note

Spacing is not a scheduling detail, it is the mechanism. Meeting this material again just as it starts to fade forces the effortful retrieval that consolidates it, which is why a note reviewed four times across three weeks outlasts the same note read four times in one evening. The built-in scheduler resurfaces these questions at widening intervals for exactly that reason — the prompt arriving when you feel you have half-forgotten is the system working, not failing.

A practical rhythm for OET Reading (60 min, 42 items): today, again tomorrow, then after three days, then after a week. If you fail a review, shorten the next interval rather than re-reading the note end to end — the failure identifies the gap precisely, and re-reading everything wastes the diagnosis.

Then apply it under pressure. Knowing a concept in isolation and using it in a timed paper are different skills, and only the second is examined. There are 10 free OET practice tests here covering 258 questions — counted from the test files, not estimated. Take a full timed OET mock →