Page 189 - English Vocabulary in Use Pre Intermediate

Numbers

Cardinal numbers
379 = three hundred and seventy nine 2,860 = two thousand eight hundred and sixty
5,084 = five thousand and eighty-four 470,000 = four hundred and seventy thousand
2,550,000 = two million, five hundred and fifty thousand
3,000,000,000 = three billion
Note: There is no plural ‘s’ after hundred, thousand, million and billion when they are part
of a number. On their own, they can be plural, e.g. thousands of people; millions of insects.

Ordinal numbers and dates
One of the problems with dates is that we write them and say them in a different way:
We write 4 January (or 4th January), but say the fourth of January or January the fourth.
We write 21 May (or 21st May), but say the twenty-first of May or May the twenty-first.
1997 = nineteen ninety seven
1905 = nineteen hundred and five or nineteen oh five

Fractions and decimals
1'/, = one and a quarter 1'/; = one and a third 1.75 = one point seven five
1'/, = one and a half 1.25 = one point two five 1.33 = one point three three
17/4 = one and three quarters 1.5 = one point five

Percentages
26% = twenty-six per cent
More than 50% is the majority; less than 50% is the minority.

Arithmetic
There are four basic processes for working out (= calculating) a problem:
+ = addition e.g. 6 +4 = 10 (six plus/and four equals/is ten)
— = subtraction e.g. 6 — 4 = 2 (six minus four equals/is two)
x = multiplication e.g. 6 x 4 = 24 (six times / multiplied by four equals/is twenty-four)
+ = division e.g. 4 +2 =2 (four divided by two equals/is two)

Saying ‘0’
This can be spoken in different ways in different contexts.
telephone number: 603 724 = six oh three, seven two four (AmEng = six zero three)
mathematics: 0.7 = nought point seven, 6.02 = six point oh two
temperature: —10 degrees = ten degrees below zero / minus ten degrees
football: 2~0 = two nil tennis: 40-0 = forty love
Talking numbers

Here are several useful words and expressions connected with numbers:
The streets have got odd numbers (e.g. 3, 5, 7) on the left and even numbers (e.g. 4, 6, 8)
on the right.
I got 16 out of 20 in our last test. Wen

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English Vocabulary in Use (pre-intermediate & intermediate)