Numbers, Dates and Prices: The Vocabulary of IELTS Listening Part 1

Part 1 of IELTS Listening is an everyday conversation between two people — a room booking, joining a sports club, enrolling on a language course. Most of the answers in this conversation are data: a name, a date, a time, a price, a phone number, a postcode. The rule is strict: if one digit is wrong, the whole answer is wrong, because there are no half marks here.

Your strategy has three steps:

1. Read the questions before the audio and identify the type of each gap: will it be a date, a price or a code?
2. For numeric answers, writing in figures (12.50, 21 March) is usually quicker. Follow the task instruction and required answer format.
3. If the currency sign (£) or the day of the week is already printed on the question sheet, don't repeat it in your answer.

A listener might hear a sentence like this: "The deposit must be paid by the first of next month." The answer being asked for here is a date, not an amount — the label on the question points you in the right direction.

The costliest mistake is mixing up numbers that end in -teen and -ty. Listen to the whole word: vowel length, the final /n/ and stress in the sentence can help. When said on its own, a -teen form often has final stress (thir-TEEN), while a -ty form has initial stress (THIR-ty). Stress can shift in a sentence, so do not decide from stress alone. Listen for the final /n/ in -teen and the vowel difference too.

Context helps too. Compare:

"A single ticket costs thirteen pounds." "The yearly membership is thirty pounds."

If you are still unsure, check the logic: are 30 guests realistic for one room? And if it is a date, does the month you heard actually have a 30th?

In British English the order of a date is day – month – year. Years before 2000 are split into two parts when read: 1987 → nineteen eighty-seven. Years from 2000 to 2009 are read in full (two thousand and eight), and from 2010 on they are often paired again (twenty twenty-five; two thousand and twenty-five is also heard).

Here is the trap: in the recording a date is often corrected — "on the fourth… sorry, the fourteenth of July". Write only the final version, not the first one you hear.

In Part 1 the currency is usually shown as a printed sign in the question (£ ___), so write only the number in your answer. If you add the word pounds as well, the answer may be marked wrong. The decimal point can be said as point, but in everyday speech the whole and fractional parts are simply spoken one after the other.

Watch out for two traps:

• Fifteen hundred means 1,500, never 15,000.
• Twelve fifty is an amount of money in a price context, but in a year context it can be 1250 — always look at the type of question.

Example: "That comes to forty-two pounds seventy-five." → 42.75

Phone numbers are read digit by digit. Zero is often pronounced oh and sometimes said as zero. There are special words for identical digits that come one after another: double (twice) and triple (three times).

A sample line of dialogue:

"My mobile is oh seven nine, double two, six four one." → 07922641

The golden rule: wait until the number is finished. Speakers correct themselves: "It's 2077… sorry, 2707." The correct answer is only the last version. Spaces don't matter when you write — what matters is that the digits are in the right order.

Postcodes and booking codes are a mix of letters and numbers: M13 4QT, booking reference TR7 9KP. Letters are read one by one; for letters that can be confused, the speaker gives a helper name: "D for David".

The riskiest pairs and typical helper names:

Don't worry about capital or lowercase letters when you write — what matters is getting the right characters. Repeat the letters aloud: spelling is half of Part 1.

Test all the skills together. Ask a friend to read the list to you, record your own voice and play it back, or use a text-to-speech tool. Write the answers in figures, in exam format, then reveal the key and check.

Dictation list

1. "The course fee is sixteen pounds fifty."
2. "We take groups of up to ninety people."
3. "Your appointment is on the thirteenth of September."
4. "Call us on double two, four, one, nine."
5. "The postcode is M one three, four Q T."
6. "She was born in nineteen eighty-six."
7. "One night costs eighteen fifty, breakfast included."
8. "The locker code is triple five, two, oh."
9. "The festival starts on the second of December, two thousand and ten."
10. "Delivery is forty-seven pounds."

Answer key

1. 16.50 — price
2. 90 — a number ending in -ty
3. 13 September — date
4. 22419 — phone number
5. M13 4QT — postcode
6. 1986 — year
7. 18.50 — price (context: an overnight stay)
8. 55520 — code
9. 2 December 2010 — full date
10. 47 — sum of money

If you get 8 or more of the 10 right, your Part 1 data skills are ready. For any category where you made a mistake, go back to that section and read its table aloud once more.