Class 3 - Speaking. Acronyms, times and dates

Class 3 - Speaking. Acronyms, times and dates

On the speaking part of the test, you will most likely read outloud some or all of the following: acronyms (high-frequency combinations of letters), numbers (including times and dates), amounts of money and people’s titles.

Acronyms

• An acronym is a word that is formed by combining the first letters of other words – often a company or country name, a job title, or the name of an organisation or association. Common examples include USA (United States of America); CEO (Chief Executive Officer); BBC (British Broadcasting Corporation).

• Some of these acronyms may appear in Part 2 of the BULATS Online Speaking test. Accordingly, you will need to know how to say them. Usually, the letters are read out separately (e.g. UK (United Kingdom); NGO (Non-governmental Organisation); sometimes, they are pronounced together as one word (e.g. PIN (Personal Identification Number). This exercise will give you practice in saying some of these acronyms.

Note that all of the acronyms in this set are pronounced by saying the individual letters as spelled out below.

• I-T

• B-A

• C-D

• M-D

• P-C

• C-V

• A-G-M

Time

Times will be written as a number followed by o’clock (e.g. 3 o’clock) or with the hour and minutes separated by a full stop (e.g. 8.20 = eight-twenty or twenty past eight).

If a.m. or p.m. is specified, you should say the hour before the minutes (e.g. 8.20 p.m. = eight-twenty P-M (not twenty past eight P-M)), and if the minutes number is less than 10, you should say ‘oh-‘ before the minutes number (e.g. 9.05 a.m. = nine oh-five A-M).

Note that there are different ways to say times that are 15, 30 or 45 minutes past the hour.

• 1:15 - one-fifteen or (a) quarter past one

• 7:30 - seven-thirty or half past seven

• 11:45 - eleven-forty-five or (a) quarter to twelve

Dates

Dates will be written with the date followed by the month.

If the day of the week or the year is included, the day (e.g. Monday) will come before the date and month; the year will come after. Dates should be said as ordinal numbers preceded by ‘the’, but can be said before or after the month.

Date examples:

• 1 March - the first of March or March the first

• 27 November - the twenty-seventh of November or

  November the twenty-seventh