ELPAC listening practice questions for grades 11–12

Renata: Mr. Cordova, I sent my transcript request through the online form on Monday, but the college portal still says my file is incomplete.

Mr. Cordova: The form reaches me, but I only process requests on Wednesdays and Fridays. Yours went out yesterday afternoon.

Renata: So it has been sent. Then why would the portal not show it?

Mr. Cordova: Colleges take about a week to match a transcript to a student file, and they match on your date of birth. If you typed the date differently on your application, the transcript sits in their system unattached to anything.

Renata: I can check that today.

Mr. Cordova: Do that first. If the dates match and the portal still says incomplete next Tuesday, come back and I will call the admissions office myself.

Tomas: Ms. Whitaker, my paycheck shows twenty-six hours, but I wrote down thirty on my own calendar.

Ms. Whitaker: Let me open the timesheet. It shows two shifts where you clocked in and never clocked out.

Tomas: That would be the two Saturdays I left through the loading door.

Ms. Whitaker: The system closes an open shift at four hours automatically, so you were paid for four when you worked seven.

Tomas: Can that be fixed now, or do I wait for the next check?

Ms. Whitaker: I will file a correction today and the difference goes onto next Friday's deposit. But get into the habit of clocking out at the terminal by the break room. The one at the loading door only reads badges for deliveries.

Anh: Jamal, did you use the housing report for your government paper? The one the city posted.

Jamal: I read part of it, but I cited the newspaper article about it instead. The report is ninety pages.

Anh: Ms. Farrell said to cite the document itself whenever we can reach it. The article is somebody else's reading of the report.

Jamal: The article has the number I need, though, and it is right there on page one.

Anh: The report has that number too, in the summary table near the front. I would spend the ten minutes. If the article got the number wrong, the mistake becomes yours.

Jamal: Fair. I will pull the table and cite the report, and I can still quote the article for the mayor's reaction.

Imani: Ms. Whitaker, I need a Saturday morning off two weeks from now. I am taking a college placement exam that morning.

Ms. Whitaker: I can approve that, but the schedule for that week is already posted, so I cannot just take you off it. You need to find someone to cover the shift, and they need to tell me themselves.

Imani: Could I ask Marcus? He said he wants more hours.

Ms. Whitaker: You can ask him, but he is already scheduled for forty hours that week. One more shift would put him into overtime, and I cannot approve overtime without the district manager. Try someone who works part-time.

Jonah: Mr. Salazar, could I have an extra week on the policy essay? My family is traveling for my cousin’s wedding, and I will be gone for three days.

Mr. Salazar: Did you know about the wedding when I assigned the essay a month ago?

Jonah: I did. I should have started sooner.

Mr. Salazar: Here is what I can do. Turn in whatever draft you have on the original due date, even if it is unfinished. I will read it as a draft, and you can turn in a revised version the following week for full credit. That way you are not writing during the wedding, and you are not skipping the deadline either.

Hana: Grant, the housing form wants me to choose a meal plan, either fourteen meals a week or nineteen. Nineteen is every single meal, so that seems safer.

Grant: My sister chose nineteen her first year, and she says it was the most expensive mistake she made.

Hana: Why? Was the food bad?

Grant: The food was fine. But the meals reset every Sunday night, and whatever she had not used that week just disappeared. She almost never got up in time for breakfast, so she was paying for five meals a week that she never ate.

Hana: So I should think about which meals I will actually show up for, not every meal there is.

Grant: Exactly. And most colleges let you add meals later in the term, but they will not give you money back for the ones you did not use.