How OET Speaking is actually marked
Most candidates prepare for a language test. OET Speaking is scored as a language test AND a clinical communication test — and the second half is where prepared candidates quietly lose their B.
The two halves of your score
Two trained assessors score each role-play. Four linguistic criteria are banded 0–6: Intelligibility, Fluency, Appropriateness of Language, and Resources of Grammar and Expression. Five clinical communication criteria are scored 0–3: Relationship building, Understanding the patient's perspective, Providing structure, Information gathering, and Information giving.
The key fact: a B-grade performance is strong on every criterion — one weak area caps the whole result. That is why targeted feedback beats generic practice.
What the linguistic bands reward
- Intelligibility — how easily a listener follows you. Accent is never penalised: at band 6 the descriptors explicitly say an L1 accent has no effect. What costs marks is strain: fragmented delivery, swallowed word-endings, flat stress.
- Fluency — even, natural flow at a conversational pace (roughly 110–160 words a minute). A few fillers per hundred words is normal speech; frequent word-searching, false starts and abandoned sentences are what pull the band down.
- Appropriateness of language — plain-English explanations, professional register, and every technical term given its lay twin the first time (“your long-term sugar measure — we call it HbA1c”).
- Resources of grammar and expression — errors are weighed by their effect on meaning, not counted. Simple-but-clean beats ambitious-but-broken; range earns the top bands.
What the clinical criteria reward
- Relationship building — a greeting matched to the relationship on the card, empathy said out loud (naming the feeling — never a bare “don't worry”), non-judgemental tone.
- Understanding the patient's perspective — eliciting their ideas, concerns and expectations, and picking up cues. Exam cards hide a worry; walking past it is the single most expensive mistake available.
- Providing structure — signposting (“First…, then…, before you go…”), logical order, summarising.
- Information gathering — open questions before focused ones, one question at a time, no leading questions, clarifying vague answers.
- Information giving — chunk-and-check: one piece of information, a pause, a check — and a teach-back close (“How would you explain the plan to your wife tonight?”) instead of “any questions?”.
What this means for your practice
Practise the exam, not just English: full timed role-plays, with feedback that names the criterion each mistake costs. That is exactly what OEZ's reports do — every band justified with your own words, and a “to move up” note per criterion. See it in action in a walked-through role-play, or try one free on OEZ.
Practise this on OEZ — start freeFull speaking role-plays with an AI patient, timed writing tasks, and marking modelled on OET’s published criteria. No card needed.