Expressing Numbers in English

Recently a student asked me about how to express numbers..... think about this:
1,235  How would you say it?
One thousand, two hundred and thirty five
an interesting note:  in British English we put in 'and'
in American English the 'and' is eliminated

Here is an interesting website for ESL learners:
www.esl.about.com
There are many links and lots of activities!  Enjoy!

When expressing large numbers (more than one hundred) read in groups of hundreds. The order is as follows: billion, million, thousand, hundred. Notice that hundred, thousand, etc. is NOT followed by an ‘s’.

Two hundred NOT two hundreds

NOTE: British English takes 'and' between 'hundred and ...' American English omits 'and'. In the examples below, this is represented: (AND)

Hundreds

350 – three hundred (AND) fifty 425 – four hundred (AND) twenty five

Thousands

15,560 – fifteen thousand five hundred (AND) sixty 786,450 – seven hundred (AND) six thousand four hundred (AND) fifty

Millions

2,450,000 – two million four hundred (AND) fifty thousands 234,700,000 – two hundred (AND) thirty-four million seven hundred thousand

Daylight Savings Time

Many learners want to know why we change our clocks?

Here is the origin: (from National Geographic)

Ben Franklin—of "early to bed and early to rise" fame—was apparently the first person to suggest the concept of daylight savings, according to computer scientist David Prerau, author of the book Seize the Daylight: The Curious and Contentious Story of Daylight Saving Time.

While serving as U.S. ambassador to France in Paris, Franklin wrote of being awakened at 6 a.m. and realizing, to his surprise, that thesun would rise far earlier than he usually did. Imagine the resources that might be saved if he and others rose before noon and burned less midnight oil, Franklin, tongue half in cheek, wrote to a newspaper.

So we use it to get more daylight hours and in Canada it gets dark very quickly in the winter.  How do you feel about it?

Here are some words to check the meanings of:

circadian rhythm

energy

season

ahead

behind/back

nap

Don't forget to change your clocks AHEAD by one hour when you go to sleep on Saturday night.  

You will then 'lose' an hour.  

If you have any questions, email us!