This article is details 6 pointers which will help you score high on the OET writing subtest.

1. Who are you writing to? ❔

The answer to this question has the potential to completely change the geography of the letter you are going to write. Are you writing to a doctor or a caretaker or a nurse? If you are writing to a doctor, are you writing to a general physician, or a gynaecologist, or a neurologist? Understanding this will give you an understanding of what to look for in the case notes.

2. Patient details ????

Does the referee know the patient? If the person whom you are writing to already knows the patient and the medical issues the patient has presented with, there is obviously no need to go back to the basics. There is no need to mention the background, the age, and other such details. Including these will only lower your score.

3. Case notes have distractors.????

OET always includes unimportant and irrelevant case notes. These are just superfluous detail. Depending on what the letter is about, you need to assess which points need attention and elimiate those that are unnecessary. For instance, when referring a patient with breathing trouble to a pulmonologist, there is no need for you to mention the occassional bout of acidity the patient experiences.

4. Organise in two levels. – There will be TWO issues. ????

Once you select which details you need to included, organise these in the order of priority, which ones are primary, and which are secondary? Also look at whether these issues are medical (breathing trouble) or social (problems communicating with older people) and organise them accordingly. A clear structure is very important for scoring well in the OET.

5. Restate the request. ????

If the introductory sentence is a request, make sure that the request is mentioned in greater detail in the final paragraph of the passage. We must reiterate what we want the reader to do. (This will be given to us as a part of the management plan)

6. Transform ????

Remember that, at the end of the day, OET is a language test. You are being tested on how well you can use the language. Do not lose sight of this fact. NEVER copy or replicate the case notes as they are. OET expects you to transform these notes into complex sentences that show organisational features. Changing words is not enough. You are expected to change the structure too.