Part I Listening and Reading
I Listen and read along.
ir—bird, firm, girl, skirt
ie—tie, lie, pie, die
—thief, field, piece, believe
oi—coin, oil, join, boil
ire—hire, fire, tire, retirement
II Listen to the sentences and underline the monograms mentioned above.
1. The group of birds fly happily in the fields.
2. The man with the blue tie is the sales manager of the firm.
3. She pressed a coin into the little girl’s hand.
4. Some people died in the fire.
5. Tom joined the Seniors Club after retirement.
Listening Skills
Listening for Large Numbers
We live in the world of numbers, dealing with all kinds of numbers at all time. Because of this, numbers occupy a considerable proportion in English listening.
English counting adopts the international custom of separating every three digits with a comma. For example, for a number over 1,000: count from back to front, adding a comma to each three-digit number. The first comma is “thousand”, the second comma is “million”,and the third comma is “billion”; then say it section by section. The function of these commas is that when we hear several thousand, we write down the number immediately,followed by a comma, and leave 3 digits; when we hear several million, we write down the number and put it in after writing a comma, leave 6 digits; when we hear a number of billions, the method is the same as above, and 9 digits are left behind. The following millions and thousands are analogised in this way, so that all the numbers are in place. For example, when we hear “six million twenty thousand four hundred and twenty-three,”write 6,020 in the first step, and then write the last group 423 after the first comma. The full number is 6,020,423.
As long as we strengthen the training of reading and writing large numbers in our usual training, and skillfully use commas, no matter how big the number is, it will not bring us obstacles.