You listened to a booking announcement in English and noted down the date, the time and the price, all properly. And yet, when you looked back later, you had misunderstood the whole plan — that doesn’t happen because you are bad at hearing numbers. The numbers are right. What is off is what you are supposed to do with those numbers.
Take an announcement like this, for example.
Your booking is confirmed for October fifteenth. Please arrive at two fifteen in the afternoon. The ticket is eighteen pounds per person, payable at the front desk.
(Your booking is confirmed for October fifteenth. Please arrive at two fifteen in the afternoon. The ticket is eighteen pounds per person, payable at the front desk.)
A note that just lines up numbers will betray you later
If you listen while chasing the numbers, your note will end up looking roughly like this.
10/15 2:15 18
All three are correct. But this alone is not enough. Nowhere does it record whether 2:15 is in the morning or the afternoon, what unit the 18 is in, or, above all, what you are supposed to do at 2:15. Look back a few days later and you could easily read it as “starts at 2:15,” and you would be unlikely even to notice that it is wrong.
Write the same announcement with each number attached to its role, and the picture changes.
- 10/15: booking date
- Arrival 14:15 (in the afternoon)
- Start ? (not mentioned in the announcement)
- £18 per person, payable at the front desk
What has increased is not the numbers. It is the information about what each number is for. That is the crucial point.
What makes 2:15 the “arrival” is arrive
This 14:15 is an arrival time. The reason is simple: arrive comes before the number.
You may feel tempted to fill it in: “If they are telling me to come at 2:15, the start must be around 2:30.” It is an understandable feeling. But the announcement doesn’t say that far. A start time you don’t know is simply unknown. So leave the start column as “?” That “?” is not a failure. It is a marker showing a place you should ask about, or check in another announcement.
As a test, what if the announcement had said this?
The tour starts at two fifteen in the afternoon.
This time, 14:15 is the start time, and it is the arrival column that is left empty. Even if the sound of two fifteen in the afternoon is identical word for word, the column it goes in is not decided by the number. It is decided by the verb attached to it.
Before you listen, make just the columns first
In listening lesson design, there is an approach that builds tasks divided into before listening, while listening, and after listening (TeachingEnglish’s explanation of planning listening lessons). To bring this into self-study, there is just one thing to do. Before you listen, write only the columns — “date / arrival / start / price.” That is all it takes.
Once you have columns, how you listen changes, because you start judging on the spot where to put each number you hear. If you are about to put a number that follows arrive into the start column, you can notice that hesitation yourself. And if a column is still empty when you have finished listening, you can check the transcript or listen again to find out whether the announcement simply didn’t mention it, or whether you missed it.