TELPAS Listening and Speaking Test: What to Expect and How to Practice

From grade 2, TELPAS is given on a computer as two separate tests: the listening and speaking test, and the reading and writing test. The TELPAS listening and speaking test covers two of the four domains, and each of them counts for 25 percent of a student's composite rating, the same as reading and writing.

Students take the test at school during the spring testing window, on days the school chooses. In kindergarten and grade 1 there is no online test; teachers rate listening and speaking from what they observe in class, as described in TELPAS in kindergarten and first grade.

Students in neighboring grades take the same test form. The listening and speaking test uses wider grade clusters than the reading and writing test, so a student can be in a different cluster for each test.

Students hear short recordings through a headset and answer questions about them. Most are short videos of stories and informational passages about everyday life and school subjects, and some questions ask the student to click the picture that matches what they hear. Students do not see a transcript of what they hear, so everything depends on listening.

Most questions are multiple choice. Some are hotspot items, where the student hears a short spoken direction, such as "Click on something soft, warm, and fuzzy," and answers by clicking on a picture.

The listening part is worth 27 points, in three reporting categories. The largest is basic understanding of spoken English, at 16 points.

Speaking items are speech capture items. The student sees and hears a prompt, then records an answer through the headset microphone. Each answer has a time limit of 45 or 90 seconds, depending on the item, and the directions tell students to tell as much as they can. For story-retelling items, students may watch the video again before they speak.

The speaking part is worth 36 points. Prompts ask students to do things like retell a story, describe a picture, give an opinion or compare two pictures. The TELPAS speaking test guide goes through the prompts, the rubric and speaking practice in detail.

Each speaking response is scored against a rubric. There are two: a 2-point rubric and a 4-point rubric, and which one applies depends on the item. Both look at the same features of a response:

Speaking uses hybrid scoring. Every response is scored first by an automated scoring engine. At least 25 percent of responses are also scored by trained human scorers, and responses the engine has low confidence in are sent to human scorers.

Because the recording is what gets scored, the practical details matter: a headset that fits, a microphone close to the mouth, and a normal speaking voice.

• Completeness: whether the answer covers the whole prompt with relevant detail.
• Syntax and grammar: how accurately sentences are built, and with what range.
• Vocabulary: how precise and varied the word choices are.
• Pronunciation and fluency: whether a listener can follow the speech easily.
• Use of the first language: how much the student relies on words from their home language.

TEA's released tests give the clearest picture of the real thing. In the released grades 4–5 form from 2025, the listening and speaking test has 37 items: 27 listening items, three of them hotspot items, and 10 speaking items.

The released materials include an answer key, item rationales and a speaking scoring guide with real student responses at each score point. The guide to TELPAS released tests explains where to find them and how to use them.

This site has listening practice sets and full listening practice tests for every grade from 2 to 12. The practice is organized by the reading and writing clusters, which are narrower than the listening and speaking clusters, so choose the student's own grade: a grade 6 student would use grades 6–7, and a grade 8 student grades 8–9.

One difference from the real test: on this site, every listening passage has recorded audio, and a transcript is available. On the real TELPAS test there is no transcript. For the most realistic practice, answer each question before opening the transcript, then use it afterwards to find what was missed.

• Grade 2: TELPAS listening practice for grade 2 and the grade 2 TELPAS listening practice test.
• Grade 3: TELPAS listening practice for grade 3 and the grade 3 TELPAS listening practice test.
• Grades 4–5: TELPAS listening practice for grades 4–5 and the grades 4–5 TELPAS listening practice test.
• Grades 6–7: TELPAS listening practice for grades 6–7 and the grades 6–7 TELPAS listening practice test.
• Grades 8–9: TELPAS listening practice for grades 8–9 and the grades 8–9 TELPAS listening practice test.
• Grades 10–12: TELPAS listening practice for grades 10–12 and the grades 10–12 TELPAS listening practice test.

Practice tests help with format, but listening grows through a lot of listening. Short, regular habits work better than occasional long sessions:

• After a short video or read-aloud, stop and ask: what was it mostly about? What happened first, and then?
• Give short spoken directions in English and have the student follow them. The picture items on the test work this way.
• After a short story in a show or read-aloud, ask why a character did something or what they will probably do next. Questions that ask the student to analyze what they heard are part of the test.
• Watch short informational videos and have the student name two facts they learned.
• Practice listening once without replaying. On the real test, students need to catch the important details as they hear them.

Try TEA's official practice tests at txpt.cambiumtds.com/student. They use the real testing interface, including the audio player, the hotspot items and the recording screen, so the screens are familiar on test day.

Make sure the student is comfortable wearing a headset, speaking into the microphone at a normal volume, and keeping going for the full time on a speaking item. The guide on how to prepare for TELPAS covers the other domains and test week.