How to Write Numbers, Dates and Times in IELTS Listening

Hearing the number is the easy half. The mark is decided by what ends up written down, and three separate things can lose it: the answer not being what the recording said, the answer running over the word limit, or the answer being misspelled. IELTS publishes the first two. The third comes from IDP, which states that a word with a spelling error in Listening or Reading is marked incorrect. Picture a candidate who hears "fourteen pounds fifty" perfectly and writes "fouteen pounds fifty": the listening was right and the mark is gone anyway.

So the safest habit in the whole section is short: write the numeral.

The rules the answer is marked against

Start with what IELTS itself publishes, rather than with advice.

Your answer has to be what the recording said. For the completion types IELTS states that you select words from the recording which fit the gaps, and that you do not have to change them in any way. A correctly spelled synonym, inside the word limit, is still wrong.

A word limit is stated in the instructions, in a form like "NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS AND/OR A NUMBER", and going over it loses the mark. The limit is not constant across a paper, so read it on each task.

A hyphenated word counts as one word. "Check-in" fits a one word limit. That is IELTS's own example, and it is worth knowing because the alternative guess costs you a correct answer you already had.

Contracted words such as "they're" are not tested, so you never need to write one and never need to decide whether it counts as one word or two.

To those four, add the marking rule from IDP: a word with a spelling error in Listening or Reading is marked incorrect. Not penalised, not partially credited. Incorrect.

Write the numeral, not the word

"60" and "sixty" are both acceptable, and one of them cannot be misspelled. IDP's own advice is to write the number form rather than spelling it out, precisely to avoid a spelling mistake on an answer you heard correctly.

This matters most where the word is long or irregular. IDP's spelling guide gives forty its own memory rule, because it loses the u that four has. Writing 40 sidesteps the question entirely.

The same logic applies to units. IDP lists "sixty kilometres", "60 kilometres", "60 km" and "60 kms" as all correct, so the digits plus a short unit is the version with the fewest ways to go wrong. Watch the word limit though: "60 km" is fine under two words, and spelling out a long unit may not be.

Dates

Write the month as a word or an abbreviation and you cannot be misread. IDP gives "March 5th", "Mar 5th" and "5th of Mar" as acceptable forms.

Ordinals are the trap. Most take "th", and the genuine exceptions are 1st, 2nd and 3rd. IDP's own list runs to five, adding 4th and 5th, which take "th" and are not exceptions to anything; this page keeps the three that are. IDP says explicitly that writing "2th" is marked incorrect, which is the kind of slip that happens under time pressure rather than through ignorance.

Times

Times are written the same way even when they are said several ways. What you need is to recognise the spoken form fast enough to write the digits.

Quarter to is the one that costs marks, because it points at the next hour rather than the one you just heard.

Money

Write the numeral and the symbol, or the numeral and the word. IDP's examples are "$4.50" for "four dollars fifty cents" and "£4.50" for "four pound fifty pence", reproduced here as written, singular "pound" and all, and it notes that dollars and pounds are the two currencies you are most likely to meet.

The amount is often said in a form that does not match how it is written. "Four dollars fifty" has no decimal point in it anywhere, and you still write one.

Phone numbers and other strings of digits

Two spoken conventions turn a sequence you heard correctly into a sequence you wrote wrongly.

Zero is often said as "O", like the letter. It is still a zero and you still write 0.

A repeated digit is often said as "double" or "triple". IDP's examples: "double seven" and "triple three" inside 2450 7762 3338, and "O three" and "double nine" inside 03 9658 9914. Hearing "double nine" and writing a single 9 is a mark lost to transcription, not to listening.

Thirteen or thirty

The single most common number confusion in the section, and it is a stress pattern rather than a vowel. IDP's guidance is that the "teen" ending is stressed while "ty" is usually unstressed: thir-TEEN against THIR-ty.

The pairs worth drilling are 13 and 30, 14 and 40, 15 and 50, 16 and 60, 17 and 70, 18 and 80, 19 and 90. There is no second chance to check, because the recording plays once.

Where the numbers turn up

Mostly early. IDP says you are most likely to meet numbers in Part 1 of the Listening test, which is the everyday conversation, though they can appear in any of the 40 questions. Part 1 is where forms get filled in with phone numbers, prices, dates and times, so the conventions on this page earn most of their marks in the first ten minutes.

The IELTS Listening test format covers the four parts, the six question types and how a raw score out of 40 becomes a band. If you want to see what a given raw score is worth, the Listening raw score converter will show you.

The word limit rules, the hyphenated word rule, the untested contractions and the requirement to use the recording's own words unchanged come from ielts.org's Listening format page, last checked in September 2026. The number, date, time, currency and measurement conventions come from IDP, one of the three organisations that own IELTS, in an article dated 20 May 2020. The spelling marking rule and the forty memory rule come from a second IDP article dated 24 May 2021. Both IDP articles are several years old, so treat their conventions as guidance that has not been restated recently rather than as rules IELTS publishes today. Where IDP gives advice that ielts.org does not state as a rule, this page says so rather than presenting it as one. The worked examples are original.