Getting ready for the exams: reading and listening

Esl-bits offers an extraordinary resource to practice reading comprehension in exam format. There are different kinds of activities you can do: comprehension of signs; true/false questions; matching people with the most suitable situation for them; fill in the gaps with the missing words; and general comprehension of a text: click on the link

Listening comprehension activity: numbers, names, addresses and dates

Some tips

1. Telephone numbers

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″

2. 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

You should also be prepared to write down letters and numbers for the postcode (what Americans call ZIP code). In the British system, these come at the end of addresses and combine a series of letters and numbers, eg

14, Fairhill Road

York

YO1 7AH

2. 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.




Activity
Conversation between a man who wants to hire a van and the assistant:




Key with the tapescript