Fifteen, fifty, and a name you thought you knew
Anne is practising the listening gap-fill part, where each answer is one word or a number. In the recording a man books a table:
'Table for eight people, please, at half past six on Friday.' 'Certainly. That's £15 each, and children under five eat free.' 'And the name is Kathryn - that's K-A-T-H-R-Y-N.'
Anne's answers read: '8.30 / 50 / Catherine'.
She explains: 'I heard the time but I wasn't sure, so I guessed. Fifty sounded close enough. And Catherine is how my cousin spells it, so I wrote that.' She also says she spent so long deciding about the price that she missed the name spelling completely.
1. Diagnose all three answers. For each one, say what Anne actually heard and what pulled her to the wrong answer.
Read the worked answer
1. Time: 8.30 is wrong; the answer is 6.30 (half past six). Anne did hear the phrase but hesitated between similar-sounding numbers. Six and eight are a classic minimal pair, and hesitation at that moment is what turns a heard answer into a guess. If she had written '6.30' immediately and confirmed on the second playing, she would not have needed to guess at all.
2. Price: 50 is wrong; the answer is 15. Fifteen and fifty differ in stress: fifTEEN (stress on the second syllable) versus FIFty (stress on the first). Anne matched the sound loosely and let 'close enough' stand. In a shop or booking, being close is worth nothing - a price is exact.
3. Name: Catherine is wrong; the answer is Kathryn. The recording spells the name for a reason: the examiner knows it can be spelt several ways, so the letters given are the answer. Writing the familiar spelling is answering from memory instead of from the recording.
2. Anne asks whether she should write numbers as figures or words, and whether 'half past six' would have been acceptable. What is the sound advice?
Read the worked answer
Figures are the safer default: 6.30, 15, £15, 8. They are unambiguous, quick to write, and accepted as numbers.
'Half past six' is risky for a different reason: it is three words, and the rubric allows one word or a number. Even though the meaning is right, Anne would be handing the marker a reason to refuse it under the instruction.
So the hierarchy is:
- Shortest correct form: 15, 6.30.
- A single word where the answer is a word: Sunday, Kathryn, park.
- Never a phrase that combines several words, even if the recording said exactly that.
The test rewards precision, not completeness of description. If in doubt, write less.
3. Anne lost the name because she was still working on the price. What is the correct recovery behaviour, and what does the order of the questions tell her?
Read the worked answer
The recovery rule is: when an answer is gone, let it go. Mark the line with a '?', move your eyes to the next question, and stay with the recording. Guessing later, at the end, is free; guessing now costs the next answer as well. Anne paid for one uncertain price with a lost name.
The order of the questions is information she should use. The items follow the same sequence as the recording, so the position of her eyes tells her roughly where she is in the conversation. If she hears the name being spelt while her eyes are still on the price line, she knows instantly that she has fallen behind and must jump forward, not backwards.
Practical drill: on the first playing, write short forms and '?' freely; on the second, tidy, confirm and fill. Never leave a blank - a guess costs nothing and occasionally scores.