OET Writing: The Referral Letter

The big picture

• OET Writing (45 min)
  • A letter from case notes — Usually a referral letter
  • 5 min reading — Study the notes before writing
  • Select relevant info — Include only what the reader needs
  • Profession-specific — Matched to your field

One profession-specific letter

OET Writing gives you 45 minutes and a set of case notes from which you write a letter — most often a referral letter to another health professional. It's specific to your profession, so the scenario reflects your real practice, and you typically get about 5 minutes to read the notes first.

Select — don't copy everything

The core skill is choosing the relevant information for the letter's purpose and reader, not transcribing every note. Include what the recipient needs to act, and leave out irrelevant history — over-including hurts your score.

Organise clearly with the right register

Structure the letter: opening (who and why), the relevant background and current situation, and a clear request or purpose, then a professional close. Keep the register formal and courteous — this is professional correspondence.

Rated on real-world criteria

OET Writing is judged on criteria like purpose, content, conciseness and clarity, genre and style, organisation, and language. Accurate grammar, spelling and a professional tone matter — leave time to check the letter before the 45 minutes end.

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 A letter from case notes, and how does it connect to OET Writing (45 min)?
2. Without looking: what is 5 min reading, and how does it connect to OET Writing (45 min)?
3. Without looking: what is Select relevant info, and how does it connect to OET Writing (45 min)?
4. Without looking: what is Profession-specific, and how does it connect to OET Writing (45 min)?

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 Writing (45 min): 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 →