Level 1 · Listening

Part 1 of the Listening test is where you should collect most of your marks. The conversation is slow and clear, the topic is ordinary, and the answers are names, numbers and everyday nouns. Yet Level 1 candidates regularly lose three or four marks here, and almost never because they did not understand. They lose them on a letter, a number, a plural s or one word too many.

This unit trains those small things until they are automatic. You will then use them in two recordings: a phone call and a short talk.

Lesson 1 · How Part 1 works

In Part 1 you hear two people in an everyday situation. One of them usually wants something, such as a booking, a ticket or some information, and the other asks questions and writes down the details. You do the same job as the person who is writing: you complete a form, some notes or a table.

Most Part 1 conversations follow the same route. First come the caller’s personal details: name, address, postcode, telephone number. Then come the details of the service: dates, times, prices, what to bring, where to go. When you know the route, you are never surprised by the next question.

In the computer-delivered test you type each answer while you listen. You do not get ten minutes at the end to copy your answers, as candidates did on paper. You get two minutes to check them. So your answers must be right the first time you type them.

Lesson 2 · Predict the kind of answer

Good listeners do not wait to see what comes. Before the recording starts, they already know what kind of answer each gap needs. Then they only have to catch one small piece of information, not understand every word.

In your reading time, ask two questions about every gap:

• What kind of information is it? A name, a number, a date, a time, a price, a place, a thing?
• What does the grammar tell me? Is there a or an before the gap? Is the noun singular or plural? Is there a £ sign or a.m. printed already?

Notice the last line. The student does not know the answer, but she has two or three ideas. When the speaker says ‘You’ll have to take a lock as well’, she is ready for it.

Lesson 3 · Letters

Names and codes are spelt out letter by letter, at normal speed, and only once. You know the alphabet, of course. The problem is that under pressure several letter names are easy to mix up, and one or two are said differently in India.

Letters improve only with practice at speed. Every day this week, spend two minutes spelling aloud: your full name, your street, your email address, the names of three friends. If you hesitate over a letter name when you say it, you will hesitate when you hear it.

Lesson 4 · Numbers and prices

Thirteen or thirty?

This pair, and the others like it (14/40, 15/50 … 19/90), costs more marks than any other number problem. The difference is in the stress and the ending.

Speakers know this is difficult, so they often check: ‘Was that one-five or five-oh?’ When you hear a check like this, listen hard. The answer is about to be confirmed.

Telephone numbers

• Each figure is said separately, in groups of three or four, with a small pause between groups.
• 0 is usually ‘oh’. Americans also say ‘zero’.
• ‘Double seven’ is 77. ‘Treble six’ or ‘triple six’ is 666.
• A UK mobile number has 11 figures and begins 07. If you have written 10, you have missed a ‘double’.

Bigger numbers and prices

• British speakers put and after hundred: ‘three hundred and fifteen’ is 315.
• ‘Eighteen pounds fifty’ or just ‘eighteen fifty’ is £18.50. ‘Seventy-five p’ or ‘seventy-five pence’ is 75p.
• ‘Four ninety-nine’ in a shop is £4.99, not £499.
• Room, flat and flight numbers are often read figure by figure: ‘room three oh four’ is 304.
• You will never hear lakh or crore. Large numbers go in thousands and millions: ‘a hundred thousand’, not ‘one lakh’.

Lesson 5 · Dates and times

Dates are spoken in two ways: ‘the twenty-second of March’ or ‘March the twenty-second’. Americans often say ‘March twenty-second’. All of these mean the same, and you may write the answer as 22 March, 22nd March or March 22. The shortest form, 22 March, is the safest because it leaves the least to spell.

You do need to spell the month and the day. The ones that Level 1 students get wrong most often are February, August, Wednesday, Thursday and Saturday. Write each of them five times today.

Times are often given the ‘clock’ way, not the ‘digital’ way.

Lesson 6 · Addresses and postcodes

An address in the recording usually has a number and a road name, and sometimes a flat number first: ‘Flat 4, 21 Park Avenue’. The road name is either spelt out or is a common word that you are expected to know, such as Park, Mill, Bridge, Church or Station. Learn the usual words that follow it: Road, Street, Avenue, Lane, Drive, Close.

A British postcode is a mixture of letters and numbers in two groups, for example SW19 4DQ. The first group is usually one or two letters and then one or two numbers. The second group is always one number and then two letters. If you know this pattern, you know when to expect a letter and when to expect a number. Other countries are simpler: an Australian postcode is four numbers.

Lesson 7 · The word limit

Every completion task tells you how much you may write. In Part 1 the instruction is usually:

Write ONE WORD AND/OR A NUMBER for each answer.

That allows three kinds of answer: one word (helmet), one number (18.50), or one word with one number (22 March). It does not allow two words. If you write more than the limit, the answer is marked wrong even when the information is correct.

The second rule is just as important: never repeat a word that is already printed beside the gap. If the form says ‘the main ’ and you write main entrance, the completed line reads ‘the main main entrance’, and you have also written two words.

Lesson 8 · Spelling traps

Double letters

Common words are not spelt out for you. Several words that appear again and again in Part 1 have double letters, and Level 1 candidates usually write one letter where there should be two.

Notice the opposite mistake too: writing and dining have one consonant, and tomorrow has one m.

Singular or plural?

In Indian languages the plural is not made with a final s, and when we speak English quickly that s often disappears. In the test it cannot disappear. If the speaker says ‘two suitcases’ and you write suitcase, the answer is wrong.

You have two chances to get it right. First, listen for the ending. Second, read the words around the gap:

• a / an / one / each + gap: singular.
• two / some / several / all + gap, or gap + are: plural.
• No article and a countable noun (‘Wear strong ’): almost certainly plural.

Check the spelling of the plural as well: class → classes, party → parties, child → children.

Lesson 9 · When the speaker changes the answer

The test is not only checking that you can hear a number. It is checking that you can follow a conversation. So the speakers often say one thing and then change it: someone mishears, someone checks an old timetable, a price has gone up. The first thing you hear is not always the answer.

You will study this skill in detail in the Level 2 unit. For now, one habit is enough: do not stop listening when you have typed something. Keep following until the speakers move to the next line of the form.

Practice: Recording A

Lesson 10 · The same skills in a talk

Part 2 has one speaker, not two: someone giving practical information to a group of visitors, new members or listeners. Nobody repeats or checks anything for you, so you have to keep your place on your own. Two task types are common, and both use the skills you have just practised. (Part 2 can also include map labelling and matching, which you will meet at Level 2.)

Multiple choice

Each question has three options, A, B and C. In a talk at this level the speaker normally mentions all three, so hearing a word from an option proves nothing. Follow three steps.

1. In the reading time, read the question (the stem) carefully. Look quickly at the options so that you know the three ideas.
2. As you listen, expect all three ideas. Ask about each one: is the speaker saying yes or no to this?
3. Choose the option that answers the question in the stem. Words such as but, in fact, used to and instead usually come just before it.

For example, the question is ‘Where is the car park?’ and the options are in front of the building, behind the supermarket and next to the station. The speaker says: ‘You can’t park in front of the building, I’m afraid, and the station car park is for rail passengers only. But there’s plenty of space behind the supermarket.’ You hear all three places. Only one answers the question.

Sentence completion

Here you complete a sentence with a word or number from the recording. The sentence on the page uses different words from the speaker, but the word you write is exactly the word you hear. Predict as you did with forms: what kind of word, and singular or plural? Then listen for the same idea in other words.

The speaker never says ‘closed’. ‘Every day except’ gives you the same meaning.

Practice: Recording B