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Telephone numbers
There are one or two points to consider when you are listening to a telephone number in English.
Addresses
House numbers
When you are listening for an address, you should expect a number and a street name. Typically, the number comes before the name of the street, for example
13, Fairfax Street
Types of different roads
If you have to write down the name of a road, the name will either be spelled out for you or be a common English word that you should be able to spell, eg
34, Bishop Street
or
48, Ormondroyd Street, that’s O-R-M-O-N-D-R-O-Y-D
You should also make certain that you can spell the different words that we use for roads, these are:
There are one or two points to consider when you are listening to a telephone number in English.
- 0 is pronounced “oh” and you are most unlikely to hear “zero”
- if there is a double number, we say “double 7″
- we don’t say the numbers one by one, rather we read them in groups of 2 or 3. So 13554684616 would be said “13-double 5 – 468-46-16″
Addresses
House numbers
When you are listening for an address, you should expect a number and a street name. Typically, the number comes before the name of the street, for example
13, Fairfax Street
Types of different roads
If you have to write down the name of a road, the name will either be spelled out for you or be a common English word that you should be able to spell, eg
34, Bishop Street
or
48, Ormondroyd Street, that’s O-R-M-O-N-D-R-O-Y-D
You should also make certain that you can spell the different words that we use for roads, these are:
- Road
- Lane
- Street
- Avenue
14, Fairhill Road
York
YO1 7AH
The spelling of names
If you see you need to write out a name, you can expect that the family name will be spelled out letter by letter. This can sometimes cause problems for candidates (even high-level ones) who cannot automatically recognise the names of the letters in English – perhaps because they missed out on learning English at the very elementary level and their sounds do not match their names. The ones which most frequently cause trouble are:
Dates
There are a number of different ways in which say and write down dates. The most common system is:
York
YO1 7AH
The spelling of names
If you see you need to write out a name, you can expect that the family name will be spelled out letter by letter. This can sometimes cause problems for candidates (even high-level ones) who cannot automatically recognise the names of the letters in English – perhaps because they missed out on learning English at the very elementary level and their sounds do not match their names. The ones which most frequently cause trouble are:
- a as in say
- e as in teeth
- i as in eye
- x as in ex-friend
- y as in why
Dates
There are a number of different ways in which say and write down dates. The most common system is:
“the 25th of October ” – speaking
“25 October/25th October” – writing
If you have to write down a date and there is a word limit of one word/two words, you should not write down “the” and “of”. It does not matter if you put the month before the date.
A common trap
Quite often you will hear more than date/time/number and the one you need is not the first one you hear. To make it harder, sometimes the speaker gives one piece of information and then goes back and corrects it. In this case, make sure you write down the second correct version.
“25 October/25th October” – writing
If you have to write down a date and there is a word limit of one word/two words, you should not write down “the” and “of”. It does not matter if you put the month before the date.
A common trap
Quite often you will hear more than date/time/number and the one you need is not the first one you hear. To make it harder, sometimes the speaker gives one piece of information and then goes back and corrects it. In this case, make sure you write down the second correct version.
