The OET has no syllabus in the school sense — there is no list of medical topics to revise, and no candidate is examined on clinical knowledge. What it has instead is a tightly specified structure: four sub-tests, a fixed number of parts and questions in each, published marks per part, and published assessment criteria for the two productive skills. Knowing that structure is most of what "knowing the syllabus" means for this test, and it is what this page sets out, alongside the Myndaq OET course.
Who the test is for, and what is common to everyone
OET is written for twelve healthcare professions: Medicine, Nursing, Dentistry, Dietetics, Pharmacy, Physiotherapy, Podiatry, Radiology, Occupational Therapy, Veterinary Science, Optometry and Speech Pathology. The split that matters for preparation is this: Listening and Reading are the same for every profession and use material of general healthcare interest, while Writing and Speaking are profession-specific — a nurse writes a nursing letter and plays a nursing role, a pharmacist a pharmacy one.
There are three delivery modes — OET Test on Paper, OET Test on Computer at a venue, and OET@Home — and the content and structure below are the same in all three. What differs is how you answer (booklet, keyboard, or your own computer) and how the Speaking role-plays are conducted (face to face, or over a live platform).
Listening — approximately 40 minutes, three parts, 42 questions
The Listening sub-test carries 42 marks: Part A accounts for 24, Part B for 6 and Part C for 12. You hear each recording once only.
- Part A is the consultation extract: you complete notes using the same words you hear. The official instruction is not to paraphrase and not to change the information — you lose marks for repeating words already in the notes, adding information that is not in the recording, or contradicting yourself.
- Part B and Part C are answered by multiple choice: on paper you shade the lozenge next to your answer, and answers written anywhere else in the booklet are not marked. Part B uses shorter workplace extracts and Part C longer ones, which is why Part C carries twice the marks.
A range of accents is used across all three parts — mainly Australian, British and American, with others including New Zealand, Irish, Canadian and South African. Spelling is treated more flexibly than in Reading, but OET says you may still lose marks for spelling mistakes, and you can lose marks for grammar mistakes. On paper you get two minutes at the end to check all three parts; on computer or at home there is a short pause after each question instead.
Reading — 60 minutes, three parts, 42 questions
Reading also carries 42 marks, split 20 for Part A, 6 for Part B and 16 for Part C.
- Part A is the expeditious reading task: four short texts on one topic, answered in the spaces in the question booklet. It has a strict 15-minute limit and the Part A materials are collected after it, so there is no going back to check those answers later.
- Part B and Part C are multiple choice, answered by shading the circle next to the option. Part B uses short workplace texts — the memos, policy extracts, emails and notices of a working department — and Part C uses longer texts on healthcare topics, testing meaning, opinion, attitude and vocabulary in context.
Two rules cost marks every session. In Part A you must use exactly the same form of the word or short phrase as it appears in the texts, and spelling must be correct — a misspelled response receives no mark (British and American variants are both accepted). Abbreviations are not accepted unless they appear in the texts.
Writing — 45 minutes, one profession-specific letter
The task is a formal letter based on case notes: usually a referral, discharge or transfer letter, addressed as the task instructions specify. The 45 minutes are five minutes of reading time followed by 40 minutes of writing, and you may consult the task and case notes throughout. The target length is 180–200 words. There is no automatic penalty for going over or under, but OET's own guidance is that a much longer letter usually contains irrelevant material or poor organisation, and a much shorter one has usually missed information.
Two assessors mark the letter against six criteria: Purpose, Content, Conciseness and Clarity, Genre and Style, Organisation and Layout, and Language. Purpose is marked out of 3 and the other five out of 7; the criterion scores are combined and converted to the 500 scale. OET states that test-takers securing grade B have typically achieved 2 out of 3 for Purpose and 5 out of 7 for each of the remaining criteria. Spelling, punctuation and grammar all sit under Language. No particular layout is prescribed — the letter has to be clearly laid out and appropriate to the task.
Speaking — approximately 20 minutes, two role-plays
Speaking is two profession-specific role-plays of about five minutes each, with an interlocutor playing the patient, carer or client. You get preparation time with a role card, may write on it, and may refer to it during the role-play. Role-plays normally come to a natural end at around the five-minute mark; if not, the interlocutor signals the close, and there is no penalty for not covering every element on the card — though the more you cover, the more evidence you give.
The recording is assessed by two assessors against two sets of criteria. The Linguistic criteria are four in number and marked out of 6. The Clinical Communication criteria fall into five categories, each with three to five sub-indicators, and are marked out of 3. Grade B candidates, OET says, have achieved predominantly 5 out of 6 on each linguistic criterion and 2 out of 3 on the clinical communication criteria. On the computer test the role-plays are conducted with the interlocutor over Zoom.
How marks become a score and a grade
Every sub-test is reported on a scale from 0 to 500 in ten-point increments, and each numerical score is mapped to a letter grade from A (highest) to E (lowest). There is no overall grade — you receive four separate scores. The published bands are A for 450–500, B for 350–440, C+ for 300–340 and C for 200–290, with the lower grades below that.
For Listening and Reading, the 42 raw marks are converted to the 500 scale, and OET states that test-takers awarded grade B (a scale score of 350) typically achieve at least 30 marks. That word "typically" is doing real work: new tests are written for every session, and the grade boundaries are adjusted slightly per version to allow for differences in difficulty, so the raw mark needed for B varies. Treat 30 out of 42 as a target with a margin, not as a pass mark.
What is not published
OET does not publish a topic list for Listening or Reading, does not publish retired papers, and does not publish the raw-to-scaled conversion for any individual test version. It does publish sample tests, the Writing and Speaking criteria documents, and the score-to-grade bands above. Anything you see elsewhere claiming an exact number of marks for a B on a specific date, or a list of "likely" Listening topics, is not from the test provider.
How long a result remains valid is not an OET decision either — the boards, councils and government departments that recognise the test set their own validity periods, so check the recognising organisation's page rather than assuming a figure.
For what the test costs and how bookings, cancellations and re-marks work, see OET fees and booking. For worked examples of the Reading formats, see OET practice questions.
Quick answers
How many questions are in OET Listening and Reading?
42 in each. Listening splits 24, 6 and 12 across Parts A, B and C; Reading splits 20, 6 and 16.
How long is each OET sub-test?
Listening approximately 40 minutes, Reading 60 minutes, Writing 45 minutes (five reading, 40 writing), Speaking approximately 20 minutes.
What score is grade B?
350–440 on the 0–500 scale. For Listening and Reading that typically means at least 30 of 42 marks, but the boundary moves slightly between test versions.
Are Listening and Reading different for nurses and doctors?
No. Listening and Reading are common to all twelve professions. Writing and Speaking are profession-specific.
How long must the OET letter be?
180–200 words. There is no automatic penalty outside that range, but the criteria scores will reflect irrelevant content or missing information.
