OET SPEAKING PRACTICE
Practise OET Speaking role plays with an AI simulated patient
MedEngly's OET Speaking practice is a live, hands free, two way role play with an AI simulated patient. You read a role play card, prepare for three minutes, then open the consultation and talk to the patient out loud. Your side of the conversation is marked from a transcript against the nine published OET Speaking criteria, and your first marked role play is free, with no payment card needed.
Free account: 1 fully marked letter and 1 marked role play. No card, no subscription.
How a practice session works
Each session is one role play: three minutes of preparation, then a consultation of up to five minutes.
Choose a role play and read the card. The card gives the setting, your role, a short brief and the tasks you need to cover. You will be speaking to a simulated patient (or a parent, carer, relative or animal owner, where the scenario calls for one). Cards for your own profession are listed ahead of the others.
Prepare for three minutes. The preparation timer runs for three minutes with the card on screen. You can pause it or start the role play early. Your browser asks for the microphone at this point, so a blocked microphone shows up before the role play begins, not during it.
Open the consultation yourself. As in the real test, the candidate speaks first. Greet the patient, introduce yourself and take it from there.
Talk, pause, listen. By default the microphone is live. When you pause, your turn is sent and transcribed, and the simulated patient answers by voice, with the words shown on screen, usually in one to three short sentences. You can speak over the patient to interrupt, and in a noisy room you can untick Hands-free and press Speak, then Stop and send, yourself.
Watch the five minute clock. The role play is timed at five minutes, as in the exam. The clock is held only while the simulated patient is working out its reply, and the screen says so.
End the consultation to get your marking. Your conversation is saved as a labelled transcript, with your turns and the patient's, and goes to marking. The feedback screen opens straight away and shows your result when marking finishes.
What it marks
Your side of the conversation is marked against the nine published OET Speaking criteria, in two families: how you speak, and how you run the consultation itself.
LINGUISTIC · 4 CRITERIA
- Intelligibility
- Fluency
- Appropriateness of language
- Resources of grammar and expression
CLINICAL COMMUNICATION · 5 CRITERIA
- Relationship building
- Understanding and incorporating the patient's perspective
- Providing structure
- Information gathering
- Information giving
Marking runs in two AI passes: a first marking, then a second pass that checks every score and must justify any change. For every criterion the first pass quotes the transcript as evidence before it commits to a band. You get a band for each criterion, an indicative estimate on the 0 to 500 scale, notes on specific moments in your own transcript, and three fixes for your next role play.
How OET Speaking is scored · See a marked role play · How the marking is checked
What it cannot do
The marking cannot hear you. Your speech is turned into an automatic transcript, and the marking reads that text, so it cannot judge your accent, pronunciation, stress or intonation directly. Intelligibility and fluency are assessed only from what shows in the transcript, such as fillers, restarts and garbled passages, and those two bands are labelled approximate on your feedback screen. Speech recognition can also make small mistakes in your words. The audio you record is kept in your account for as long as the account exists, and is deleted when you delete the account.
How recordings are kept: the privacy policy
- The simulated patient is an AI that is instructed to keep to the scenario on its card, so it is unlikely to surprise you the way a real interlocutor can.
- One practice session is one role play of about five minutes. The real test has two.
- The feedback is practice feedback based on published OET criteria. It is not an official evaluation, estimated grades are indicative, and MedEngly never guarantees an exam result.
- For a judgement of how you sound, a human listener such as a tutor or a colleague is still the right tool.
Who it is for
It is for healthcare professionals preparing for the OET Speaking sub-test who want to rehearse a whole consultation out loud without arranging a practice partner, and who want a transcript marked against the criteria so they can see where to gain a band.
Speaking is marked against the same nine criteria for all 12 OET professions: medicine, nursing, dentistry, pharmacy, physiotherapy, occupational therapy, dietetics, optometry, podiatry, radiography, speech pathology and veterinary science.
Common questions
Is OET speaking practice with MedEngly free?
Your first marked role play is free. A free account includes 1 marked speaking role play and 1 fully marked practice letter, and it needs no payment card. The free role play is used once you have spoken your first turn, not when you open the card. Options for more marked role plays are described on the home page.
How is a speaking role play marked?
The conversation is saved as a transcript and marked against the nine published OET Speaking criteria in two AI passes: a first marking, then a second pass that checks every score and must justify any change. For every criterion the first pass quotes the transcript as evidence before it commits to a band. How the marking is tested, and its stated limits, are on the trust page.
Can it hear my accent or pronunciation?
No. The marking works from an automatic transcript, not from your audio, so it cannot judge accent, pronunciation, stress or intonation directly. Intelligibility and fluency are assessed only from signals visible in the text, such as fillers, restarts and garbled passages, and those two bands are labelled approximate on your feedback screen. The audio you record is kept in your account for as long as the account exists, and is deleted when you delete the account. For a judgement of how you sound, ask a tutor or a colleague to listen.
Is this the real OET, or an official score?
No. MedEngly is an independent preparation service, not affiliated with, or endorsed by, OET or Cambridge Boxhill Language Assessment. Its feedback is practice feedback based on published OET criteria, not an official evaluation, and estimated grades are indicative. MedEngly never guarantees exam results. The role play cards are original practice material, not OET test items.
How is it different from practising with a partner?
A partner can react like a real person and can hear your accent, which this cannot. What this adds is a simulated patient who does not need arranging and is instructed to keep to the scenario on the card, and a marking that quotes the transcript against nine criteria, so you can see where to gain a band.
Does it work on my phone?
It is designed to run in a phone browser. You need to allow the microphone, an internet connection and, ideally, a quiet place. On a small screen the card folds away behind a toggle during the role play, and if your phone blocks the patient's voice from playing automatically there is a tap to hear button. Headphones are worth using, because the patient's voice can otherwise leak back into your microphone.
Which OET professions can use it?
Speaking is marked against the same nine criteria for all 12 OET professions: medicine, nursing, dentistry, pharmacy, physiotherapy, occupational therapy, dietetics, optometry, podiatry, radiography, speech pathology and veterinary science. Cards for your own profession are listed ahead of the others in the practice bank.
Do I need an account?
Yes. The role play runs inside a free account, which needs no payment card, because the conversation and its marking are saved to your account.
Run your first role play
Create a free account, open a role play card and talk to the patient. Your first marked role play is free.
Free account: 1 fully marked letter and 1 marked role play. No card, no subscription.