The focus of this lesson is on avoiding silly mistakes in part 1 listening. If you require a band score 7 or above, you should really aim to get 10 out of 10 here as the questions only get harder. However, it can be surprisingly easy to make mistakes in this part if you are unprepared.To help you out, I describe some of more problems and explain how to listen more effectively for numbers, names, addresses and dates the questions everyone should get right. There is a full part one listening practice at the end.Telephone numbersThere are one or two points to consider when you are listening to a telephone number in English. 0 is pronounced oh and you are most unlikely to hear zero if there is a double number, we say double 7 we dont say the numbers one by one, rather we read them in groups of 2 or 3. So 13554684616 would be said 13-double 5 468-46-16AddressesHouse numbersWhen you are listening for an address, you should expect a number and a street name. Typically, the number comes before the name of the street, for example13, Fairfax StreetTypes of different roadsIf you have to write down the name of a road, the name will either be spelled out for you or be a common English word that you should be able to spell, eg34, Bishop Streetor48, Ormondroyd Street, thats O-R-M-O-N-D-R-O-Y-DYou should also make certain that you can spell the different words that we use for roads, these are: Road Lane Street AvenueYou should also be prepared to write down letters and numbers for the postcode (what Americans call ZIP code). In the British system, these come at the end of addresses and combine a series of letters and numbers, eg14, Fairhill RoadYorkYO1 7AHThe spelling of namesIf you see you need to write out a name, you can expect that the family name will be spelled out letter by letter. This can sometimes cause problems for candidates (even high-level ones) who cannot automatically recognise the names of the letters in English perhaps because they missed out on learning English at the very elementary level and their sounds do not match their names. The ones which most frequently cause trouble are: a as in say e as in teeth i as ineye x as inex-wife y as inwhyDatesThere are a number of different ways in which say and write down dates. The most common system is:the 25th of October speaking25 October/25th October writing