Reading Figures and Numbers

Ms Rebei Hager 1
Reading Figures and Numbers

What is the difference between ordinal and

cardinal numbers?

Ms Rebei Hager 2
 Reading Figures and Numbers
• There are cardinal numbers like:
One
Two
Three
• There are ordinal numbers like:
First
Second
Third

Ms Rebei Hager 3
 Reading Figures and Numbers
1/ Decide whether to use ordinal or cardinal numbers

 I have breakfast at  (6) o'clock. 

 My brother is in the  (6) class. 
 Jamie is  (10) years old. 
 Today is the  (10) of April. 
 It costs only  (1) pound. 
 I am so happy, that he won the  (1) prize. 
 It takes (5)  hours to get from London to Cairo
by air. 
 It's the  (5) day of our holiday in Florida.
 He scored  (3) goals in (2)  games. 
 It was his  (3) goal in the last  (2) games. 

Ms Rebei Hager 4
Reading Figures and Numbers
Work with your friend next to you:

Think about a one digit number,

two-digits number , three digits,
four , five, six , seven, eight and
nine digits number, Exchange
numbers and write them in letters

Ms Rebei Hager 5
• We put a hyphen in compound numbers below
100,
e.g. twenty-one, three hundred and sixty-five.
• We use and between hundred and the rest of the
number
E,g,two hundred and fifty.

NB, Americans can leave out and: two hundred fifty.

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• Hundred, thousand, million, etc. do not have
an –s when they are part of a number. Eg,The
flight costs six hundred pounds.
• But for phrases like hundreds of people, they
do
• We write thousands in figures as 1,000 or with
comma. But we do not use a full stop/point
1.000 for a thousand. We use a point only in
decimals.

Ms Rebei Hager 7
• To identify things like a credit card, a passport,
or a telephone, we read each figure separately.
Eg, Express Card 4929 8063 1744
 ‘four nine two nine, eight zero six three, one
seven four four’
Eg, Call us on 01568 927 869
 ‘oh one five six eight, nine two seven, eight
six nine’

Ms Rebei Hager 8
• When we talk about the figure 0, we call it
‘nought’ (British English) or ‘zero’.

• You’ve missed out a nought/a zero from this

number.

Ms Rebei Hager 9
Fractions
• In fractions we use half, quarter, or an ordinal
number.
• ½ a half/one half 1 1/2 one and a half
• 2/3 two thirds 2 1/3 two and a third
• 1/4 a quarter/one quarter 6 3/4 six and three
quarters
• 4/5 four fifths 15/16 fifteen sixteenths
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Decimals

• We use a point (not a comma).

• Each figure after the decimal point is spoken
separately.
• We can use a plural noun after a decimal.

Ms Rebei Hager 11
Percentages

• Look at these examples.

• Save 25%! (‘twenty-five per cent’)
• a 2 per cent growth in population (‘two per
cent’)
• inflation of 3.72 per cent (‘three point seven
two per cent’)

Ms Rebei Hager 12
 Dates
• These are the three most common ways of
writing the date in English.
• Cardinal number + month: 3 May 15 August
• Ordinal number + month: 3rd May 15th
August
• Month + cardinal number: May 3 August 15

Ms Rebei Hager 13
 Listening

• Listen to the audio script and write the figures

in words,

Ms Rebei Hager 14