What is the main point the lecturer 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 Lecture on Cattle Drives
Press play to listen. You can pause, rewind, and replay as often as you like.
Show transcript
Dr. Whitfield: Today we are looking at the great cattle drives that began in Texas right after the Civil War.
Dr. Whitfield: When the war ended in eighteen sixty-five, Texas had millions of longhorn cattle and very few buyers. Here, a steer was worth only a few dollars. But in the growing cities of the North, people wanted beef, and the same steer could sell for many times that price. The problem was getting the cattle there.
Dr. Whitfield: The answer was the railroad. Rail lines had reached Kansas, but not Texas. So ranchers hired cowboys to walk huge herds north on trails like the Chisholm Trail, to railroad towns such as Abilene, Kansas. From there, the cattle went east by train.
Dr. Whitfield: Many of those cowboys were Black or Mexican American, and much of cowboy life, from roping to the saddle itself, came from Mexican vaqueros.
Dr. Whitfield: Within about twenty years, the long drives were over. Railroads were built into Texas, so ranchers could ship cattle from close to home, and barbed wire fences closed off the open land the herds had crossed. So remember: the drives existed because of one gap, the distance between the cattle and the railroad. When that gap closed, so did the drives.
The question
Choose the best answer.
What is the main point the lecturer wants students to remember?
- Cowboys were the most important workers in the history of Texas.
- Barbed wire was the main reason that Texas cattle became so valuable.
- The drives lasted only while railroads were far from Texas cattle.Correct answer
- Texas ranchers earned more money than ranchers in any other state.
Why “The drives lasted only while railroads were far from Texas cattle.” is correct
This asks for the speaker's purpose. Lecturers often signal the key idea with words like "So remember." Here she sums up that the drives existed because of the distance between cattle and railroad and ended when that gap closed. The wrong answers are details, or ideas that sound important but are not what she sums up.
Why the other answers are wrong
- Cowboys were the most important workers in the history of Texas. — Cowboys are discussed, but her closing point is about the gap between cattle and railroads.
- Barbed wire was the main reason that Texas cattle became so valuable. — Barbed wire helped end the drives; the cattle were valuable because people in the North wanted beef.
- Texas ranchers earned more money than ranchers in any other state. — The lecture never compares Texas ranchers with ranchers in other states.
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.