OET does not release past papers, so there is no archive of "previous year questions" to work through — the provider publishes sample tests and the marking rules, and that is the whole of the official practice material. What a practice page can add is worked reasoning on items built to the same formats: why the answer is what it is, and which rule of the sub-test the wrong options are designed to catch. The questions below are drawn from the Myndaq practice bank and are not reproductions of any official item. They cover the Reading sub-test, because it is the one where a candidate loses marks to the rules rather than to English, and they sit alongside the Myndaq OET course.
The pattern you are practising for
- Reading is 60 minutes, three parts, 42 questions, one mark each. Part A carries 20 marks, Part B 6 and Part C 16.
- Part A has its own 15-minute limit and the materials are collected when it ends. Answers go in the spaces in the booklet, must use exactly the word or short phrase as it appears in the texts, and must be spelled correctly — a misspelling scores nothing. Abbreviations are accepted only if the texts use them.
- Parts B and C are multiple choice, answered by shading the circle next to the option. Anything written elsewhere is not marked.
- Grade B (350 on the 0–500 scale) typically needs at least 30 marks, but new tests are written for each session and the boundary shifts slightly with difficulty, so aim above 30, not at it.
The sets below are shorter than the real parts. Part A here is four short texts with six questions instead of twenty; the aim is to show each question type once with its reasoning.
Part A — expeditious reading
Four texts on one topic: falls prevention on a hospital ward. In the test you would have the four texts in front of you and would move between them to locate each answer against the clock.
Text A — Falls Risk Screening. All patients aged 65 and over must be screened for falls risk within four hours of admission. The screening tool assigns a score from 0 to 10. A score of 4 or above indicates the patient is at risk and triggers a full multidisciplinary assessment.
Text B — Environmental Safety. Bed brakes must be engaged at all times unless the bed is being moved. The call bell should be placed within reach of the patient before staff leave the bedside. Spills on the floor must be reported and cleaned immediately to prevent slips.
Text C — Footwear and Mobility. Patients should wear well-fitting, non-slip footwear when walking. Slippers with loose heels are not permitted on the ward. Patients requiring a walking aid must have it kept within arm's reach at all times.
Text D — Post-Fall Procedure. After any fall, do not move the patient until injury has been excluded. Record the event in the incident report within 24 hours. Neurological observations must be commenced if the patient hit their head.
Question 1 — matching. Which text describes how the call bell should be positioned?
Answer: Text B. The matching questions open Part A and are the fastest marks in the sub-test if you scan for the key noun rather than reading. "Call bell" appears in one text only. The trap in matching is a plausible neighbour — Text C is also about the patient's immediate surroundings — so check the exact item, not the theme.
Question 2 — sentence completion. The falls screening must be completed within ______ of admission.
Answer: four hours. Text A. Note the form: the text says "within four hours", so "four hours" is the answer and "4 hours" is a risk — the rule is the same form of the word or phrase as given in the text. Numbers written as words in the text should be written as words in your answer.
Question 3 — sentence completion. A score of 4 or above triggers a full ______ assessment.
Answer: multidisciplinary. Text A again, and this is where spelling decides the mark. A candidate who knows the answer and writes "multidiciplinary" scores zero. If a long clinical word is the answer, copy it letter by letter from the text; there is no credit for meaning.
Question 4 — short answer. What kind of footwear should patients wear when walking?
Answer: well-fitting, non-slip footwear. Text C. Short-answer items allow a short phrase, and the safest phrase is the one the text uses. Adding words of your own ("comfortable shoes") is not the same form as the text and can lose the mark.
Question 5 — sentence completion. A walking aid must be kept within ______ at all times.
Answer: arm's reach. Text C. The apostrophe is part of the phrase as written. Candidates who paraphrase to "reach of the patient" have borrowed from Text B's call-bell sentence — a classic cross-text contamination in Part A, where similar phrases sit in different texts.
Question 6 — short answer. Where must the fall event be recorded?
Answer: in the incident report. Text D. Not the observation chart, which Text D mentions for neurological observations; the question asks where the event is recorded, and the text says the incident report, within 24 hours.
Part B — short workplace texts
Each Part B item is one text and one three-option question, usually on the main point, the purpose, or a specific instruction or condition.
Text 1 — Notice: Fire Doors on Corridor Level 3. Please do not prop open the fire doors along the Level 3 corridor. These doors are designed to close automatically and form a barrier that slows the spread of smoke and fire, giving patients and staff time to reach safety. We understand that closed doors can make moving equipment and beds more awkward, particularly during busy periods. However, wedging or tying doors open removes this protection and is a breach of fire safety regulations. If a door is difficult to open or does not close fully, report it to the estates team so it can be adjusted. Magnetic hold-open devices linked to the alarm may be installed on request where frequent access is genuinely needed.
Question 7. What is the main point the notice makes about the fire doors?
- A. They must never be propped or wedged open.
- B. They may be tied open during busy periods only.
- C. They should be kept locked at all times.
Answer: A. The notice opens with the instruction and restates it — wedging or tying doors open is a breach of regulations. B is the distractor built from the concession about busy periods, which the notice acknowledges and then overrules. C introduces "locked", which the text never says; fire doors close, they are not locked.
Text 2 — Memo: Revised Protocol for Verbal Telephone Orders. Following a recent audit, the medication safety committee has updated the procedure for accepting verbal orders by telephone. Nursing staff may accept a telephone order only when the prescriber is unavailable to document it directly and a delay would compromise patient care. The receiving nurse must write the order down in full and then read it back to the prescriber, who must confirm each element. A second registered nurse must witness the call wherever staffing permits; where a witness is not available, this must be noted in the record. The prescriber is required to countersign the order within 24 hours. Importantly, the previous allowance for verbal orders relating to controlled drugs has been withdrawn entirely: such orders will no longer be accepted under any circumstances and must be documented by the prescriber in person.
Question 8. What does the memo indicate about verbal telephone orders for controlled drugs?
- A. They are now prohibited and require in-person documentation by the prescriber.
- B. They may be accepted if the prescriber countersigns within 24 hours.
- C. They are permitted provided a second nurse witnesses the call.
Answer: A. The final sentence is the answer, and both wrong options are true statements about the memo attached to the wrong drugs: countersigning within 24 hours and the second-nurse witness apply to ordinary telephone orders, not controlled drugs. Part B rewards reading the specific condition the question names, then checking whether the option's detail belongs to that condition or to a different one.
Part C — longer text
Part C texts are longer pieces on healthcare topics, and the questions test what a writer means, implies or feels rather than what a policy instructs.
Text. When Sister Amara Devi took charge of the discharge lounge at a busy district hospital, she found a service that everyone praised but few actually used. The lounge had been designed as a comfortable space where patients who were medically ready to leave could wait for medication, transport or a relative, freeing up beds on the wards upstairs. On paper, it was an elegant solution to the daily struggle for space. In practice, the ward staff rarely sent anyone down.
Devi spent her first fortnight simply watching. She noticed that nurses on the wards saw the lounge as a place where patients were, in her words, "handed over and forgotten". A patient moved to the lounge no longer had a named nurse checking on them, and if a discharge was delayed for hours, nobody upstairs felt responsible. So the wards kept their patients close, beds stayed full, and the lounge sat half empty while the emergency department queued for admissions.
Her response was not to redesign the room or add more chairs. Instead, she assigned a single nurse to the lounge for every shift, someone whose only job was to shepherd each patient through the final steps of leaving. That nurse chased the pharmacy, booked the transport and phoned the relatives. Crucially, the ward that sent a patient down received a text message the moment that patient actually left the building. Devi believed the wards needed to see an ending, not just an absence.
Within three months, the average time a patient spent waiting to leave had fallen sharply, and the number of patients using the lounge more than doubled. Devi is quick to say the figures are not the whole story. What pleases her most is that ward nurses now speak of the lounge as "the last good hour" rather than a dumping ground. She admits one risk: a dedicated nurse can become a bottleneck if too many patients arrive at once, and she is trialling a second pair of hands at peak times. For Devi, the real test is whether a patient leaving feels cared for right up to the door, not merely processed out of a bed.
Question 9 — detail. What was the main problem Devi identified with the discharge lounge?
- A. Ward staff were reluctant to send patients there
- B. The room was too small and lacked comfortable seating
- C. There was no space available for new admissions
- D. Patients preferred to stay on the wards until discharge
Answer: A. The first paragraph ends with it: the ward staff rarely sent anyone down. C describes a consequence (the emergency department queuing), not the problem she identified; D attributes to patients a preference the text gives to the wards; B is contradicted by her decision not to redesign the room.
Question 10 — vocabulary in context. The phrase "handed over and forgotten" in the second paragraph is used to convey that ward nurses felt patients in the lounge were
- A. being cared for by better qualified staff
- B. discharged more quickly than expected
- C. no longer receiving anyone's continued attention
- D. safer than they had been on the ward
Answer: C. The text explains its own phrase in the next sentence — no named nurse checking, nobody upstairs feeling responsible. Part C vocabulary questions are almost always answered by the sentence immediately after the quoted phrase, because the writer supplies the gloss.
Question 11 — writer's opinion. What pleases Devi most about the results of her changes?
- A. That ward nurses' view of the lounge has changed
- B. That twice as many patients now use the lounge
- C. That the emergency department no longer queues
- D. That waiting times fell sharply
Answer: A. B and D are both true results stated in the paragraph, which is what makes them dangerous; the question asks what pleases her most, and the text answers with the phrase "What pleases her most is" followed by the nurses' new language. When a question uses a superlative, look for the same superlative in the text.
Question 12 — writer's opinion. What does Devi regard as the real test of her approach?
- A. Whether the second nurse can be funded permanently
- B. Whether patients feel cared for until they leave, not just moved out of a bed
- C. Whether the emergency department admits patients faster
- D. Whether waiting times continue to fall each month
Answer: B. The final sentence states it. A is a detail from the risk she admits, turned into a test she never proposes. The text repeatedly separates the numbers from what she values, and the last sentence is where that distinction is made explicit.
How to use practice like this
Work Part A against a 15-minute clock from the first attempt, because the time limit is the skill being tested; getting every answer right in 25 minutes tells you nothing about test day. After marking, sort your Part A errors into three bins — wrong text, wrong phrase, wrong spelling — since each needs a different fix. For Parts B and C, write one sentence for each wrong option explaining which sentence of the text it was built from; the distractors in this test are nearly always true statements attached to the wrong condition, and naming the trick is how you stop falling for it. Then re-read the syllabus page for the marks-per-part split and put your practice hours where the marks are: Part A and Part C carry 36 of the 42.
Quick answers
Does OET publish past papers?
No. The provider publishes sample tests and the assessment criteria. The questions on this page are Myndaq practice items written to the same formats, not official items.
How many marks do I need in Reading for grade B?
Typically at least 30 of 42, per the provider, but the boundary moves slightly between test versions.
Do spelling mistakes cost marks in Reading?
Yes. A misspelled Part A answer receives no mark, though British and American spellings are both accepted. Listening is treated more flexibly.
Can I go back to Part A after the 15 minutes?
No. The Part A materials are collected after 15 minutes, so check those answers as you write them.
Are Reading texts profession-specific?
No. Reading and Listening are common to all twelve professions; only Writing and Speaking are profession-specific.
