How to make reading numbers easy

Reading numbers is one of the most difficult skills to develop as a non native speaker. I meet people every day who speak English to a very high level but still struggle with reading numbers! If this sounds like you then this quick practice routine can help you build this skill in only a couple of minutes of regular practice.

All you need to start with this practice routine is a couple of spare minutes, a pen, and a piece of paper. You can certainly do this on your computer if you would like to. To begin, you're going to write a number on each line, adding a digit every time you go down to the next line. You can keep going for as long as you want, or as long as you think will be useful. I would recommend going up to hundreds of millions, then you're going to be practicing reading numbers talking about things like large amounts of money and populations. When you're done you should have something that looks like this...

Now comes the practice. You need to read down the list of numbers. Take your time, feel free to think about each number for a moment before you say it. If you want to take this a little more seriously you can use your phone to record your voice. Then you can go back and listen to yourself speaking. You may not notice when you're speaking, but mistakes are easier to notice when you listen to yourself making them! This will also give you a great chance to think about your pronunciation. If you can't understand what you're saying then neither can other people.

There are a couple of things that you can do to make this exercise either easier or more difficult. The first is to include commas. Most large numbers will be broken up by commas, however many will not be. Especially if you see them at work in a financial or accounting context. You can also make this easier by adding numbers to the left each time, or more difficult by adding new numbers to the right each time. Try it once and you'll see what I mean! Finally the more zeros you put in, like I have in the example here, the easier it will be.

This practice exercise can be turned into a routine really easily since it only takes a couple of minutes. You can even use the notes app on your phone to do it while you're on the move. I've known people have great success with this tool. Using only a couple of minutes a day you can really improve your ability to read numbers in just a couple of weeks. Like your music teacher always told you, it's better to practice 5 minutes every day instead of 30 minutes at the weekend, and it's easy practice exercises like this that can really help you build that habit.

If you have any questions or want to discuss practicing your English when you're alone or any other aspect of improving your English then book a call with me and let's talk!