IELTS Listening Spelling Rules: Plurals, Numbers, Dates

Listening is the section where a candidate who understood everything can still lose a handful of marks, because every answer is checked against a key, letter by letter, by a clerk or a computer that does not know what you meant. "Accomodation" for "accommodation", "ticket" for "tickets", "13" for "30": each is a question understood and a mark lost. The rules that govern what counts are short, they are the same in every test, and most candidates have never read them as a list. This page is that list, with examples, and a way to test yourself on the words that come up most.

The rules, with an accepted and a refused example

The table gives the rules as they apply to the answer sheet, on paper or on screen. The refused column shows an answer that would be marked wrong even though the candidate had understood the recording.

Two of these rules do most of the damage. The plural rule, because the final s is quiet in speech and candidates write what they expect rather than what they hear; and the word limit, because a candidate who writes "the red car" for "red car" has understood perfectly and still scores nothing. Read the instruction for each group of questions before the recording starts, and underline the limit.

Thirty words that Listening asks for and candidates misspell

The words below come up in the forms, timetables, bookings and lecture notes that Listening answers are made of. Each is given with the error that a marker sees most often. The IELTS Listening Tips: Question Types, Spelling Rules, Traps guide has a shorter list of twenty; this one extends it to thirty with the days, months and everyday nouns of Section 1.

The pattern behind most of them is a letter that is not pronounced, or is pronounced weakly, in ordinary speech: the n in "government", the second c in "accommodation", the d in "Wednesday", the first r in "February". You cannot hear these letters, so you have to know them. Ten minutes on this table, writing each word once from memory and checking, is worth more than another practice test.

The numbers that sound alike

Numbers are the answers most often marked wrong for a reason that has nothing to do with vocabulary. Four traps account for most of the losses.

1. Teen against ty: 13 and 30, 14 and 40, 15 and 50, 16 and 60, 17 and 70, 18 and 80, 19 and 90. The difference is in the stress. "Thirteen" is stressed on the second syllable and the "teen" is long; "thirty" is stressed on the first and ends short. Speakers in recordings often repeat a number or say it in another form ("fifteen, one five"), so wait for the second version before writing.
2. Decimals and fractions: 3.5, three and a half, 35. "Three point five" and "three and a half" are the same number and both written 3.5; "thirty-five" is not. The word "point" is the signal. Prices behave the same way: "four fifty" is 4.50 for a price and 450 for a distance, and the unit in the question tells you which.
3. Telephone numbers and codes. Read in groups, with "double" and "triple" ("double four" is 44), "oh" or "zero" for 0, and sometimes a pause where a written number has a space. Write the digits as they come, leave a space at each pause, and do not try to remember the whole number before writing: you cannot.
4. Hundreds, thousands and the word "a". "A hundred and fifteen" is 115, not 100 and 15; "fifteen hundred" is 1,500, an American form that appears in recordings. Years are read in pairs ("nineteen ninety-eight") except round ones ("two thousand"), and a year in a date is written in figures.

Figures are always safer than words for a number: "15" cannot be misspelled, "fifteen" can, and a figure counts as one item for the word limit whatever its length.

Letters spelled out: names, codes, postcodes

Section 1 almost always contains a name, a street or a reference code spelled out letter by letter, and the answer is right only if every letter is. The recording says the letters once, at speaking speed, and the letters that are lost are the ones that sound alike: A and R, B and V and P, D and T, E and I, G and J, M and N, S and F, U and W. Two habits fix most of it.

First, write the letters as they are said, one by one, in capitals, without waiting for the whole name: a name of seven letters is not something you can hold while the speaker moves on. Second, know the alphabet in English as a sound and not as a picture, which for most candidates means saying it aloud, in order and then out of order, until "G" and "J" no longer need a second of thought. Postcodes and booking references mix letters and figures ("SW1A 2AB", "BX47P"), and the speaker will usually say them in groups of two or three; write them in the same groups. A double letter is announced as "double": "Harris, H-A-double R-I-S". Names that are not spelled out are written the way you know them, and a common name written the common way is accepted, but if the speaker spells it, the spelling given is the only one that counts.

A ten-item dictation

There is no audio on this page, so the dictation works in three steps: read the line the speaker says, once, at reading speed; cover it; write the answer in the gap as you would on the answer sheet, within the word limit; then open the answer and compare every letter. Each item tests one rule from this page. The instruction for all ten is "no more than two words and/or a number".

1. You hear: "We can offer you accommodation in the halls of residence for the first year." Gap: "Offer for the first year: ........ in the halls of residence".
   Show the answer for item 1

   accommodation. Two c, two m. The most common wrong answer in this list.

2. You hear: "The library is closed on Wednesday for stocktaking, so come on Thursday." Gap: "Library closed on: ........".
   Show the answer for item 2

   Wednesday. The d is silent; capital optional. "Thursday" is the distractor, corrected by "so come on".

3. You hear: "That'll be two tickets for the evening performance, then." Gap: "Booking: ........ for the evening performance".
   Show the answer for item 3

   2 tickets or two tickets. The plural is required; "2 ticket" is wrong.

4. You hear: "The course starts on the fifteenth of February, not the fifth, I should say." Gap: "Start date: ........".
   Show the answer for item 4

   15 February, February 15 or 15th February. The first r in February; "fifteenth" corrected against "fifth".

5. You hear: "The deposit is thirty pounds, refundable when you return the key." Gap: "Deposit: £ ........".
   Show the answer for item 5

   30. The pound sign is printed, so the figure only. "13" is the trap.

6. You hear: "My surname is Thorne, that's T-H-O-R-N-E." Gap: "Surname: ........".
   Show the answer for item 6

   Thorne, or THORNE. The spelling given by the speaker is the only one accepted; "Thorn" is wrong.

7. You hear: "We're looking for someone part-time, about twenty hours a week." Gap: "Type of work: ........".
   Show the answer for item 7

   part-time. One word with the hyphen. "part time" written as two words risks the limit in a one-word question.

8. You hear: "You can reach me on oh seven double-four one, nine six three, two two eight." Gap: "Phone: ........".
   Show the answer for item 8

   07441 963 228. "Double-four" is 44; the groups follow the speaker's pauses.

9. You hear: "The room temperature should stay at about twenty-one degrees." Gap: "Keep the ........ at about 21 degrees".
   Show the answer for item 9

   room temperature or temperature. The e after the p; "21" is printed, so not repeated.

10. You hear: "Everyone on the committee receives the agenda a week in advance." Gap: "The ........ receives the agenda a week early".
    Show the answer for item 10

    committee. Two m, two t, two e. "receives" is printed, and ei after c.

If you lost a mark on any of the ten, note which rule it was: a silent letter, a plural, a teen number, a printed unit, a spelled name, a hyphen. Most candidates lose to the same rule twice, and that is the one to fix before the next test.

The five mistakes that cost the most

1. Writing what you expect instead of what you hear. "Ticket" because a booking is usually one, "13" because it came first in the sentence. The recording is the only source; the plural and the correction ("not the fifth, I should say") are in it.
2. Ignoring the word limit. "The red car" for "red car", "a part-time job" for "part-time". Read the instruction for each group, underline the limit, and cut articles first when you are over.
3. Repeating what the question prints. The pound sign, the unit, the word "Hotel" already in the sentence. Read the gap with its neighbours before the recording, and write only what is missing.
4. Losing a spelled name by waiting for the end. Write each letter as it is said. If you missed one, leave a space and move on; a name with one gap can sometimes be completed from the context, a name not written cannot.
5. Copying the answers to the sheet in a hurry. On paper, the transfer is where "accommodation" written correctly in the booklet becomes "accomodation" on the sheet. Copy slowly, one answer at a time, checking the question number; on computer, use the checking time at the end to reread every word, not to change answers you were sure of.

The four Listening tests on this site are marked against a key with accepted variants, so a wrongly spelled answer is marked wrong exactly as it would be in the exam, and the result page shows the key beside what you wrote. Listening Practice Test 1 starts with the kind of Section 1 conversation where names, numbers and dates are spelled and read out. The band is an estimate, not an official result.

Quick answers

Does a spelling mistake lose the mark?

Yes. There are no half marks in Listening: an answer is either the word in the key, spelled correctly, or it is wrong. One letter is enough. This applies to the words spelled out by the speaker, to ordinary words like "accommodation", and to numbers, where "13" for "30" is a wrong answer. The only tolerance is the choice between British and American spelling, and the choice between capitals and lower case.

British or American?

Either, as long as each word is spelled one way. "Colour" and "color", "centre" and "center", "programme" and "program" are all accepted. What is not accepted is a mixed form that belongs to neither ("colur"), or a spelling that is wrong in both. If you learned one system, use it throughout; there is no advantage in switching.

Are capital letters required?

No. Listening answers are not case sensitive, so "wednesday", "Wednesday" and "WEDNESDAY" all score. Many candidates write every answer in capitals on paper because it removes any doubt about a badly formed letter and makes a spelled name easier to check; that is a safe habit. What is required is the spelling, whatever the case.

Is the band official?

No. The band shown after a Listening test on this site is calculated from your raw score with the same conversion table as the exam, but the test is a practice test and the band is an estimate. Only an official IELTS test gives an official band. This site is independent and not affiliated with, endorsed by or connected to IELTS, the British Council, IDP or Cambridge English.