According to the lecture, why did the soil blow away during the drought?
Basic Understanding of Spoken English · TELPAS Grades 10–12 listening. The correct answer, and the reasoning behind it.
Reporting category 2: understand the main points and important details of spoken stories and informational passages, about everyday life and school subjects.
Listen to part of a lecture in a history class. Then answer the questions.
A History Lecture
Press play to listen. You can pause, rewind, and replay as often as you like.
Show transcript
Dr. Whitfield: Today we're looking at the Dust Bowl, which hit the southern Great Plains, including the Texas Panhandle, during the 1930s.
Dr. Whitfield: In the years before, farmers had plowed up millions of acres of native grassland to plant wheat. Those grasses had deep roots that held the soil in place, even during dry years. When a long drought arrived in the early 1930s, the crops died, and there was nothing left to hold the soil down.
Dr. Whitfield: The wind did the rest. Huge dust storms carried topsoil for hundreds of miles. The worst day, April 14, 1935, became known as Black Sunday, when a wall of dust turned the afternoon dark.
Dr. Whitfield: So the Dust Bowl was not only a natural disaster. The drought was natural, but the damage was much worse because of how the land had been used. That's why the federal government created the Soil Conservation Service in 1935, to teach farmers methods like planting rows of trees as windbreaks and plowing along the shape of the land. Keep that idea in mind: human choices can turn a hard situation into a disaster.
The question
Choose the best answer.
According to the lecture, why did the soil blow away during the drought?
- Farmers had planted too many trees across the plains.
- The native grasses holding the soil were plowed up.Correct answer
- Heavy rain had washed the topsoil into the rivers.
- The wheat roots grew too deep and loosened the ground.
Why “The native grasses holding the soil were plowed up.” is correct
This tests understanding of a cause-and-effect explanation in a lecture. The speaker says the grasses' deep roots held the soil and that, once the crops died, 'there was nothing left to hold the soil down'. The student must link the plowing to the dust storms.
Why the other answers are wrong
- Farmers had planted too many trees across the plains. — Planting trees was one of the solutions taught later, not a cause of the problem.
- Heavy rain had washed the topsoil into the rivers. — The lecture describes a drought, which means too little rain.
- The wheat roots grew too deep and loosened the ground. — It was the native grasses that had deep roots that held the soil.
Practice more of this
More listening practice for Grades 10–12, or see the TELPAS practice test for 10th–12th grade.
This is an independent study resource. It is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or connected to the Texas Education Agency or the official TELPAS program. All questions here are original practice material written to match the published test design.