Quick answer: OET Reading Part B is 6 multiple-choice questions on 6 short workplace texts, with 3 options each. Budget 10 to 11 minutes inside the 45 minutes shared with Part C. A good score is 4 or more out of 6.
Part B is the quietest part of the OET Reading test. Only six questions. And that is exactly why students underestimate it. In my classes, and in my own recent sitting of this exam, I see the same pattern again and again. Prepared students bank these six marks in ten minutes and walk into Part C with time in their pocket. Unprepared students bleed four, five, six extra minutes here. And Part C, the hardest section, pays the bill. One more warning. The difficulty of Part B has clearly gone up in recent papers. The casual approach that worked two years ago is now a risk. This guide is the full system I teach: the 2 Minute Discipline, the Locate Rule, the Elimination Law, and the MUST signal.
Part B at a glance
| Questions | 6 |
| Texts | 6 short workplace texts, around 100 to 150 words each |
| Format | Multiple choice, 3 options per question |
| Time budget | 1.5 to 2 minutes per question, about 10 to 11 minutes total |
| Text types | Memos, emails, hospital guidelines, policy extracts, manuals, notices |
| Target score | 4 or more out of 6 |
| What it tests | The gist, the main point, and the details of workplace communication |
Part B score target
Four out of six is a good score. Five is better. Six is the best. If you are scoring four, you are on track. Below four means basic mistakes are leaking your marks, and this guide shows you exactly which ones.
Five is better. Six is the best. Below four means basic mistakes are leaking marks.
One thing about that number. OET scores are equated. Every version of the paper is calibrated against its own difficulty, so the raw marks it takes to reach 350 move a little from paper to paper. That is exactly why the target above carries margin instead of sitting on the line. See how the three parts add up to a pass.
What Part B really tests
Part B asks one question in six different costumes. Can you read the documents of a real healthcare workplace and pull out what matters? Every text is something you would truly meet on a ward or in a clinic. An infection control guideline. A staffing memo. An equipment manual. An email about a protocol change. This is why the skill transfers straight into your career. And it is why the questions reward working clinician reading: fast, purposeful, always asking, what does this document want me to know or do?
In my tracking of recent papers, expect around two questions built on emails or memos. The question stems look like this. "The email informs staff that..." "The purpose of this memo is..." "The guideline explains that..." Learn to read the stem first. It tells you your reading mode before you touch the text. An informs question wants a stated fact. A purpose question wants the document's job. A must question wants an obligation.
The 2 Minute Discipline
Your budget is 1.5 to 2 minutes per question. Around 10 to 11 minutes for all of Part B. On the computer test, the timer sits in the top corner. Keep it inside your vision. On paper, watch the room clock. This discipline exists because Part B shares its 45 minutes with Part C. Part C has sixteen questions, and they are longer, denser and slower. Every minute you overspend here is stolen from the section that needs it most.
Two rules live inside the discipline.
- If two minutes pass and the answer has not appeared, mark your best pick from elimination and move on. Some answers arrive in 40 seconds. Bank that time. Some answers resist. Do not pay for them with Part C's minutes.
- Do the sections in order. A, then B, then C. Some students attack Part C first, while they feel fresh. I have watched this fail again and again. Part C swallows 35 or more minutes, and suddenly six Part B questions must be solved in six minutes. Go with the flow of the paper. It is built that way for a reason.
The Locate Rule. Where 90 percent of answers live.
Here is the sentence I repeat until my students hear it in their sleep. Around 90 percent of the time, your job is to locate the question inside the text. The answer is sitting at that line. Part B is not a memory test. It is not a medicine test. It is a location test. Read the question. Pick its key words. Find where the text talks about exactly that. Read that line with full attention. Students who float through the whole text hoping to understand it waste time. Students who hunt the question's location strike once and move on.
The MUST signal. How to solve main point questions.
Main point and purpose questions confuse students for one reason. All three options often appear somewhere in the text. The exam is testing whether you can spot what the author is stressing, not just mentioning. And workplace writers stress things with signal words: must, required, essential, firstly, always, never.
A worked example from my classes. A dental guideline says: every place where dental care is provided must have the following documents, and every working dental practitioner and all staff must have access to a manual setting out the infection control protocols used in that practice. The question asks for the main point. Weaker students drown in the side details. Hard copy or electronic. Internet access. Document references. Trained students see must plus must pointing at one thing. Practices are obliged to keep an accessible infection control manual. That is the main point, because that is what this document exists to enforce. When a question asks what is main, hunt the obligation language.
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Choose your strategy. Then lock it.
There are two proven reading orders for Part B.
Strategy 1. Question, then text, then options. Read the question. Go find its location in the text. Understand what the text says there. Then open the options and match. Most of my students prefer this. The options cannot plant ideas in your head before you have seen the truth.
Strategy 2. Question plus options, then text. Read the question and all three options first. Then enter the text knowing exactly what you are comparing. This suits students with strong short term memory who scan fast.
Neither is better. One is better for you. Run both across two or three timed practice tests. Keep the one that scores higher. Never switch again. The exam hall is for executing a decision you already made.
The Option Trap. Answer the question, not the paragraph.
Before elimination, you must escape the mistake that steals the most basic marks in Part B. Watch how it happens. A student reads the options first. Then the student hunts for those option words inside the paragraph. The words are there. Found it. Answer picked. Next question. Fast, confident, and wrong.
Because the student never truly read the question. Never stopped to understand what the question is actually asking. And the exam writers know this habit very well. They deliberately place the words of a wrong option inside the text. So the words are present, but they answer a different point, not your question. Seeing an option's words in the paragraph is not the same as answering the question.
This mistake is painful for one more reason. The student walks out of the exam feeling good. Everything matched. Then the result card arrives, and the score tells a different story. That gap between confidence and result is the signature of the Option Trap.
The fix is pure discipline. Read the question twice before you touch anything else. Ask yourself, what is this question actually asking? A stated fact. The purpose. An obligation. Then locate the question's territory in the text. Only then open the options. The question is the boss. The paragraph is the evidence. The options come last.
The Elimination Law. And the trap that catches doctors.
If an option is not mentioned in the text, eliminate it instantly. Zero seconds of thought. Do not analyze it. Do not wonder about it. Wipe it out and work with what remains. Most Part B questions fall from three options to two the moment you apply this law honestly.
Now the trap that catches medical professionals specifically. An option can be medically correct and still be the wrong answer. Your clinical brain will whisper, but this is true, this is good practice. The exam does not mark medical truth. It marks this text. If the text does not say it, it is not the answer, no matter how right it is on the ward. I allow my students one exception only. If you truly failed to locate the answer and the clock is forcing your hand, the medically sound option is your 50 50 tiebreak. That is an emergency exit. Never a strategy.
One more pattern to train. NOT questions. What does this memo NOT tell staff about? Two options will be found in the text. One will not. Flip your hunting instinct. You are searching for the missing one.
Test day logistics worth knowing
On the paper test, Parts B and C come as one combined question paper, and you mark your answers directly on it. This is different from Part A's two booklets. Circle key words as you work. In the question. In the options. In the text. It costs no time, and it locks your attention on the lines that decide the answer.
The review protocol that actually raises your score
After every practice test, do not just count your marks. Interrogate every wrong answer. Go back to the text. Find the exact line that makes the correct answer correct. Write one sentence. I chose B because of assumption. The answer was A because line 4 says this. You are building a reasons library. Within three or four tests, your error log will expose your personal failure mode. Over assumption. Careless option reading. Location failure. That is the exact weakness you drill. Random practice gives random results. Diagnosed practice gives grade As.
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About the author. Dr. Nasir Bukhari, MBBS, is an OET Certified teacher. He completed OET's official Teacher Training in all four skills, Reading, Listening, Writing and Speaking, certified by OET's Head of Education. He has taught OET to healthcare professionals in more than 40 countries. He is the founder of CliniVerba, the house behind OET HQ.