Before you start: where the marks really go
This is a six-week plan at 20 to 30 minutes a day that gets a working nurse or doctor from "I know the test exists" to a timed, scored, recorded run of all four sub-tests, with the speaking practised every day and the Listening and Reading given as many days as the speaking. That balance is deliberate, and it comes from OET's own numbers rather than from what is comfortable to practise. The OET 2025 demographic data PDF, published on the OET test statistics page, shows the share of candidates reaching Grade B or above by first language. For Malayalam speakers it was 85.0 per cent in Speaking, 73.2 per cent in Writing, and then 27.8 per cent in Listening and 24.0 per cent in Reading. Hindi speakers: 89.1 per cent in Speaking, 58.2 in Listening, 48.9 in Reading. Tagalog speakers: 85.4 per cent in Speaking, 67.4 in Listening, 43.9 in Reading. Across all nursing candidates, 82.2 per cent reached B in Speaking and 24.9 per cent in Reading.
So if you are a nurse from Kerala, Manila or Lucknow, your speaking is very probably already close to B, and a plan that spends six weeks on role-plays alone is a plan to fail Reading by one grade and pay AU$315 to sit it again. The plan below gives Speaking a daily slot because short daily practice is how the clinical communication criteria become automatic, and it gives Listening and Reading the timed, scored work that the data says is missing. If you are a doctor, the numbers are kinder across the board (Medicine candidates reached B in Reading at 78.9 per cent), and you can lean the plan towards the role-plays and the letter.
- Six weeks, 6 or 7 days a week, 20 to 30 minutes a day.
- Every day is one task with one link: a sibling page, a TalkDrill practice route, or the free official samples on OET Ready.
- Speaking daily or near daily; Listening and Reading timed and scored at least twice a week; Writing from week 3.
- Raw-mark benchmark: the OET results page says Grade B candidates in Listening and Reading "typically" score at least 30 of 42.
How the plan works
Three rules hold the plan together.
One action a day
Each day has exactly one task and one link. You never have to decide what to do, only whether to do it. On TalkDrill the same roadmap becomes your coach plan after sign-up, so the day's task is waiting when you open the app.
Record everything you say
Every role-play is recorded and scored by you on the nine OET Speaking criteria: four linguistic (intelligibility, fluency, appropriateness of language, resources of grammar and expression, each out of 6) and five clinical communication (relationship building, understanding the patient's perspective, providing structure, information gathering, information giving, each out of 3). The scales are from the OET Test Handbook 2026 and the names from the OET Speaking criteria overview, which also says your two role-plays are recorded and assessed by at least two trained OET assessors; the interlocutor in the room does not grade you. Listening back to your own recordings is the closest you can get to the assessor's seat.
Score Listening and Reading out of 42, every time
OET converts each sub-test to the 0 to 500 scale, but the raw mark is what you can see. Write it down after every sample. Under 24 in week 1 means the 8-week variant. Under 30 in week 5 means move your date if your booking window allows it.
The materials are the same throughout: the official samples on OET Ready for Listening, Reading and Writing (never copied here, always linked), our nurse role-play cards and doctor role-play cards, the criteria page, and TalkDrill role-play practice with the AI playing the patient and a five-minute stop.
The six weeks, week by week
The full day-by-day roadmap with links is rendered below this article and on the OET hub. This is the reasoning behind each week.
Week 1: know the test (20 to 25 minutes a day)
You read the format page once and write the timings on a card: Listening about 40 minutes and 42 questions, Reading 60 minutes and 42 questions, Writing 45 minutes for one letter, Speaking 20 minutes with two role-plays of 3 minutes' preparation and 5 minutes' talk each. On days 2 and 3 you sit Listening Part A and Reading Part A from OET Ready under time and write down two raw marks: your baseline. On day 4 you copy the nine criteria into a self-score sheet. Day 5 is your first recorded role-play with the AI patient and a hard stop at five minutes; day 6 you listen back and circle your two lowest criteria. Day 7 you choose a date and mode; if your regulator is AHPRA, that mode is paper or computer at a venue, because AHPRA does not accept OET@Home, and OET@Home is in any case offered only where your country has no test venue, per the OET Test Handbook 2026. Paper bookings close 24 days before the test, Computer and OET@Home 7 days before, per the OET booking page; the paper Saturdays listed there are 7 November 2026 (bookings closed on 14 October), then 21 November, 5 December and 19 December 2026, and our dates page counts down the booking close for each.
Week 2: structure and Listening Part A (25 minutes)
Two habits are built this week. In Speaking, you open every role-play the same way and signpost every change of topic out loud, using cards 1 and 2 from the bank. In Listening, you complete Part A notes live, with the recording played once, then replay only to fix what you missed. Reading Parts B and C get one timed session, and every wrong answer gets a reason written next to it: misread, out of time, or unknown word. Day 4 is the plain-words drill (high blood pressure, insulin, a dressing change, each in 90 seconds with no jargon), which is where the appropriateness-of-language criterion is won. Day 5 is word stress in twenty medical words, the single most common intelligibility loss for Malayalam and Tamil speakers.
Week 3: the patient's perspective (25 minutes)
Day 1 you read the mistakes page for your first language (Malayalam, Tagalog, Hindi and Arabic) and pick two habits that match your week-1 recording. Cards 3 and 4 give you an angry relative and a frightened patient; the rule is one sentence of acknowledgement before any explanation, every time. Reading Part A comes round again under its 15-minute timer, and if you are still under 16 of 20 you repeat it the next day instead of the role-play. Writing starts gently: five minutes choosing what the reader of a referral letter needs from the case notes, with the letter itself left for week 4. The week ends with your first two-card mock, scored and compared with week 1.
Week 4: information giving under time (30 minutes)
This is the heaviest week. You explain a new medication and its side effects to the AI patient in three minutes with two checks of understanding, and you stop at three minutes. You sit a full Reading (60 minutes, split across two days if you must) and a full Listening (about 40 minutes, one listen) and score both out of 42 against the 30-mark benchmark. You write your first full letter in 40 minutes after five minutes of reading, and check it against the six Writing criteria (purpose, content, conciseness and clarity, genre and style, organisation and layout, language, per the OET results page). Card 5 is the patient who will not follow the plan: find out why, offer one option, agree one next step. Day 7 is a review day: your two weakest recordings and one sentence each on what changes.
Week 5: full mocks (30 minutes)
Two paired Speaking mocks (two cards back to back, three minutes' prep each, no break), a full timed Reading, a full timed Listening, and a second letter. Day 6 is a regulator check: the exact minimums for your route and whether your mode is accepted, written on your card as four numbers. For the NMC that is B (350) in Listening, Reading and Speaking and C+ (300) in Writing; for AHPRA, for tests taken from 23 April 2026, it is Listening 350, Reading 360, Writing 350 and Speaking 360, per the AHPRA accepted-tests page, which also rules out OET@Home. The requirements page has the rest. Day 7 is the tally: Listening and Reading raw marks from weeks 1, 4 and 5 side by side.
Week 6: taper (20 minutes, then less)
Nothing new. One short role-play, one Reading Part A, one Listening Part A, one side-by-side listen of your week-1 and week-5 recordings, then logistics: ID that matches the booking, the venue timetable for paper, or the headset, microphone and room check for the online Speaking test and OET@Home (the OET@Home page says a wired headset or earphones must stay plugged in for Listening and Bluetooth headphones are not allowed; the OET test regulations say headphones must not be worn for the Speaking sub-test; our format guide has the full equipment list). The day before the test is a ten-minute warm-up and an early night.
The 4-week variant
Use this if your test is booked, your week-1 baseline is 28 or more out of 42 in both Listening and Reading, and you already work in English every day. It keeps weeks 1 and 6 almost whole and compresses weeks 2 to 5 into two weeks by dropping the repeat sessions, not the first sittings.
| Week | Built from | Minutes | What stays | What goes |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Six-week week 1, days 1 to 6 | 25 | Format card, two baselines, criteria sheet, first recorded role-play and self-score | Day 7 booking, because you are already booked |
| 2 | Weeks 2 and 3 | 30 | Signposting cards 1 and 2, Listening Part A live notes, Reading Part A timed, plain-words drill, L1 mistakes page, cards 3 and 4, letter planning | The second Listening B and C set, the repeat Reading Part A, word-stress day (fold five words into each role-play instead) |
| 3 | Weeks 4 and 5 | 35 | One full Reading, one full Listening, one full letter, card 5, one paired Speaking mock, the regulator check | The second letter, the second paired mock, the review day |
| 4 | Week 6 | 20 | Everything, including the side-by-side listen and logistics | Nothing |
The cost of the 4-week version is one fewer full sample in each of Listening and Reading. If your baseline was under 28, that is exactly the practice you cannot afford to lose, which is why the variant has an entry condition.
The 8-week variant
Use this if your week-1 baseline is under 24 of 42 in either Listening or Reading, if you studied in a regional-language medium and read English slowly, or if you are a final-year student who has not yet worked on an English-speaking ward. It does not add new kinds of work; it doubles the Listening and Reading sittings and gives Writing its own week.
| Week | Built from | Minutes | Added |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Six-week week 1 | 20 | Nothing; same baselines |
| 2 | New: Reading Part A camp | 25 | Reading Part A timed on five of seven days, each followed by a five-minute check of the "out of time" answers; one role-play card; one Listening Part A |
| 3 | Six-week week 2 | 25 | Nothing |
| 4 | Six-week week 3 | 25 | One extra Listening Part C with the main-opinion line |
| 5 | New: Writing week | 30 | Three letters across the week, each from fresh case notes, each marked against the six criteria; two role-plays; one Reading Parts B and C |
| 6 | Six-week week 4 | 30 | Nothing |
| 7 | Six-week week 5 | 30 | One more full Listening if week 6's mark was under 30 |
| 8 | Six-week week 6 | 20 | Nothing |
Book the date at the end of week 3 of this version, not week 1, so that your week-2 Reading camp has already told you whether the date is realistic. For paper that still leaves you inside the 24-day booking window for a test about five weeks out.
The daily 25 minutes, minute by minute
Most days in weeks 2 to 5 follow one of three shapes. Knowing the shape removes the start-up cost that kills daily habits.
A Speaking day
| Minutes | What you do |
|---|---|
| 0 to 3 | Read the card. Underline the patient's feeling, the one thing they expect, and any medical word you must say in plain language. This is the real test's three preparation minutes, so never skip it. |
| 3 to 8 | The role-play with the AI patient. Five-minute hard stop, even mid-sentence. |
| 8 to 15 | Listen back once. Score the nine criteria. Write down the exact sentence where you lost structure or dumped information. |
| 15 to 22 | Re-do only the first 90 seconds, fixing that one sentence. Do not re-run the whole card. |
| 22 to 25 | Say five medical words in sentences with the stress marked. Close the notebook. |
A Listening day
Part A played once with notes completed live (about 15 minutes including the answer check), then five minutes replaying only the gaps, then five minutes reading the transcript of the gaps aloud at the speaker's pace. The reading-aloud step is the part most candidates skip and the part that fixes the "they speak too fast" complaint, because you are training your ear to the rhythm, not learning new words. Read-aloud practice on TalkDrill does the same job on non-medical text when you want variety.
A Reading day
Part A with a 15-minute timer and a hard stop (most of the loss in Reading is candidates who spend 20 minutes on Part A and run out of time in Part C), five minutes marking, and five minutes classifying each miss as misread, out of time, or unknown word. Only the third kind needs vocabulary work; the first two need the timer. The Listening and Reading page goes part by part.
How to score yourself
You cannot reproduce OET's conversion to the 500 scale, and you should not try. Use the raw marks and the criteria instead.
| Sub-test | What you record | Working benchmark | Where it comes from |
|---|---|---|---|
| Listening | Raw mark out of 42, one listen only | 30 or more | OET results page: Grade B candidates "typically achieve at least 30 marks" |
| Reading | Raw mark out of 42, Part A stopped at 15 minutes | 30 or more | Same statement on the OET results page |
| Writing | A tick or cross against each of the six criteria from a partner or your own next-day read | No cross against purpose or content | Criteria named on the OET results page; the NMC accepts C+ (300) here, AHPRA from 23 April 2026 asks for 350 |
| Speaking | Nine criteria, four out of 6 and five out of 3, from your own recording | Mostly 5s and 2s with no 3 or 1 | Scales from the OET Test Handbook 2026; the "mostly 5 and 2" working rule is TalkDrill's reading of what a B performance looks like, not an official threshold |
Be strict on the clinical communication side. The linguistic criteria are where nurses from our regions already do well; the marks that move between a C+ and a B in Speaking are usually providing structure (did you signpost?) and information giving (did you check understanding, or did you deliver a monologue?). Our criteria page has a worked self-score of a TalkDrill-written transcript so you can calibrate.
Test week and the night before
By test week the only work left is keeping the openings fresh and arriving rested. A few facts to have straight, all from the OET booking and mode pages:
- OET on Paper: all four sub-tests on one day at the venue, Speaking face to face in a private room, noise-cancelling headphones provided for Listening. Results in as little as 5 days for India and the Philippines, from 13 days elsewhere, per the booking page.
- OET on Computer: Listening, Reading and Writing at the venue on one day; Speaking on a different day, up to 5 days before or after, at home on the online platform. Results as little as 48 hours after the last sub-test, 95 per cent within 6 days.
- OET@Home: everything remote with a live interlocutor for Speaking; a wired headset or earphones for Listening, no Bluetooth, and no headphones during the Speaking sub-test, per the OET@Home page and the test regulations. It is offered only where your country has no test venue (OET Test Handbook 2026). Check that your regulator accepts it: the NMC and the GMC do, AHPRA does not.
- ID: the same ID you booked with, per the OET test overview page.
- Re-marks: can be requested within 72 hours of results, per the OET results page.
The night before
Read your daily card: the four timings, the nine criteria, your two circled habits and their fixes, your regulator's four numbers. Say the three things that improved between week 1 and week 5 out loud. Pack the ID. Do not sit a sample. The 30 raw marks you need in Listening and Reading were won in weeks 2 to 5; tonight only adds fatigue.
When the result arrives, the results page explains the Statement of Results and how to share it directly with the NMC or AHPRA through your OET account. If one sub-test is short, the fees and retake page explains the AU$315 single sub-test option on paper and which regulators accept a combined result. And if you are still choosing between tests, read OET vs IELTS for nurses before you book anything.