Elena says she wants to be careful. What is her reason?
Listen to an Oral Presentation · ELPAC Grades 11–12 listening. The correct answer, and the reasoning behind it.
A presentation on an academic topic, followed by three or four questions.
Listen to Elena give her presentation to the class. Then answer the questions.
Why Our School Moved First Period
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Show transcript
Good afternoon. I am Elena, and I looked at what happened when our district moved the high school start time from seven forty to eight thirty.
The research behind the change is about biology, not discipline. During adolescence, the body's sleep timing shifts later by about two hours, so a teenager told to fall asleep at nine is being asked to sleep before the body is ready.
Two years after the change, our district reported that first period absences fell by nearly a third, and the number of students arriving late dropped as well.
I want to be careful here. Those are attendance numbers, not test scores, and the district changed two other things in the same year. Whether grades improved because of the start time is a question nobody has answered yet.
So the clearest result is also the least dramatic one. More students are in the room when the day begins.
The question
Choose the best answer.
Elena says she wants to be careful. What is her reason?
- She is not sure the attendance figures were counted accurately.
- She disagrees with the research on adolescent sleep.
- The district changed other things the same year, so grades cannot be credited to the start time.Correct answer
- She has not yet been given permission to use the district's data.
Why “The district changed other things the same year, so grades cannot be credited to the start time.” is correct
This tests listening for a speaker's own caveat, which is where a claim and its evidence come apart. Elena flags two limits, that the figures measure attendance rather than achievement and that the district changed two other things in the same year, and it is the second that makes any claim about grades unsupportable. That caveat is why she stops short of the conclusion her audience is expecting.
Why the other answers are wrong
- She is not sure the attendance figures were counted accurately. — She treats the attendance figures as sound; her caution is about what they can be used to prove.
- She disagrees with the research on adolescent sleep. — She presents the sleep research approvingly, as the basis for the change.
- She has not yet been given permission to use the district's data. — Permission to use the data is never mentioned anywhere in the presentation.
Practice more of this
More listening practice for Grades 11–12, or see the ELPAC practice test for grades 11–12. For other grades, see free ELPAC practice tests by grade.
This is an independent study resource. It is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or connected to the California Department of Education or the official ELPAC program. All questions here are original practice material written to match the published task formats.