What is the main point the teacher wants students to remember?
Analyze and Evaluate Information in Spoken English · TELPAS Grades 10–12 listening. The correct answer, and the reasoning behind it.
Reporting category 3: make inferences from what was said, and work out a speaker's purpose, opinion, or what will happen next.
Listen to part of a lecture in a history class. Then answer the questions.
A History Lecture
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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.
What is the main point the teacher wants students to remember?
- Wheat should never be grown on the Great Plains.
- Human choices made a drought far more destructive.Correct answer
- Dust storms are the most dangerous kind of weather.
- The federal government caused the Dust Bowl in the 1930s.
Why “Human choices made a drought far more destructive.” is correct
This tests identifying a speaker's main point. The teacher signals it directly at the end with 'Keep that idea in mind', after stating that 'the damage was much worse because of how the land had been used'. Encourage students to listen for phrases that tell them what is important.
Why the other answers are wrong
- Wheat should never be grown on the Great Plains. — The teacher criticizes how the land was used, not wheat itself, and never says 'never'.
- Dust storms are the most dangerous kind of weather. — The lecture does not compare dust storms with other weather.
- The federal government caused the Dust Bowl in the 1930s. — The government's role in the lecture is helping to fix the problem, not causing it.
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.