OET Speaking role-play structure: a five-minute plan that covers every criterion

OET is profession-specific, so a nurse gets nursing scenarios and a doctor gets medical ones. After a short warm-up conversation about your professional background (which isn't assessed), you complete two role-plays. For each one you get a candidate card and around three minutes to prepare, then about five minutes to run the conversation.

• You play yourself — a nurse, doctor or other health professional, in a realistic setting described on the card.
• The interlocutor plays the patient, relative or carer. They follow their own card, which may tell them to be anxious, reluctant, angry or confused.
• You usually start the conversation and are expected to lead it through the tasks listed on your card.
• The interlocutor doesn't mark you. The session is recorded and assessed later against published criteria.

OET groups its Speaking criteria into two sets. The linguistic criteria look at how you speak; the clinical communication criteria look at how you manage the conversation as a health professional.

Notice that five of the nine criteria are about communication skills rather than English. A candidate with strong grammar who rattles through the tasks without listening can lose marks that a slightly less fluent but well-structured candidate earns.

Don't try to write a script. Read the setting, the patient and the tasks, then make a quick plan:

1. Underline the tasks. Most cards list three to five. Number them; the order is usually logical but you can adjust it if the patient's reaction calls for it.
2. Spot the emotional hook. Is the patient scared, sceptical, embarrassed, angry? That's where relationship-building and patient perspective marks are won.
3. Find the lay words. If the card mentions anticoagulants, decide now that you'll say 'a medicine that thins your blood'.
4. Plan one opening line and one closing line. Everything in between is conversation.

This isn't an official model — it's a practical way to make sure each criterion has a moment in your five minutes.

1. Open (about 30 seconds). Greet the patient, introduce yourself and your role, confirm their name and state the purpose of the conversation. Ask permission to go ahead. This sets up relationship-building and structure straight away.

2. Explore (about 1–1½ minutes). Before you explain anything, find out what the patient already knows and how they feel. An open question such as 'What's your understanding of why you're still in hospital?' often reveals the concern the interlocutor has been told to raise. Acknowledge it specifically.

3. Explain and negotiate (about 2–2½ minutes). Work through the card's tasks. Signpost each one ('I'd like to talk about your medication next'), give information in small chunks, and pause to check understanding. When the patient pushes back, respond to the reason rather than repeating yourself louder.

4. Close (about 30 seconds). Summarise the plan, ask the patient to explain the key point back to you (teach-back), invite questions and say what happens next.

Many cards include a reluctant or emotional patient on purpose. A few habits help:

• Name the emotion specifically. 'You sound frustrated that you've been waiting four hours' is better than a generic 'I understand how you feel', which can sound formulaic.
• Ask before you correct. If a patient believes something inaccurate (for example, that warfarin is 'rat poison'), ask what they've heard first, then explain.
• Offer choices. 'Would you like to try sitting on the edge of the bed first, or walk with the frame now?' respects autonomy.
• Don't drop a task to avoid conflict. Return to it gently: 'I hear you. Can I explain why getting up early matters for your recovery?'

• Reading tasks off the card in order without connecting them to what the patient just said.
• Long monologues of information with no pause to check understanding.
• Medical terms the patient wouldn't know, or explaining them only after they've been used several times.
• Interrupting the interlocutor to get through the card faster.
• Running out of time before the close — practise with a timer so five minutes feels familiar.

The structure only helps if it's automatic under pressure, and that takes reps out loud. Practise with a colleague playing the patient, record yourself and listen back for fillers and long pauses, and vary the patient's mood so you don't get comfortable with one script.

XINGO's OET Speaking practice gives you original nursing and medicine cards and an AI patient or relative who reacts to what you say — scared, sceptical or angry — on a five-minute timer. Afterwards you get feedback against the clinical communication criteria and language. It can't assess intelligibility from a transcript, so keep recording yourself for pronunciation.