The Foolish Man

The Foolish Man

Auto-markingPencil and paperOnline interactive
Overview
Using this Resource
Connecting to the Curriculum
Marking Student Responses
Further Resources
This task is about listening to recall information and make inferences.
Your teacher will read you a text. You will listen to some questions that go with it. Listen and follow your teacher's instructions.

Question

a) Where was the foolish man going to?

    • His home.

    • Town.

    • The river.

    • Another village.

Question

b) Where was the elephant driver going to?

    • One of the villages.

    • The river.

    • Town.

    • The path along the river bank.

Question

c) The elephant went on because

    • the fool frightened it away.

    • it wanted to drink at the river.

    • the driver dropped his hook.

    • it did not want the foolish man to ride on its back.

Question

d) The foolish man let go of the branch because he

    • saw the elephant going away.

    • wanted to sing too.

    • was tired of holding on.

    • tried to clap his hands.

Question

e) Near the end of the story, what mistake did the elephant driver make?

    • He did exactly as he was asked.

    • He trusted the fool.

    • He let go of the foolish man's feet.

    • He expected his elephant would get them down.

Question

f) What happened to the fool and the driver in the end?

    • They sang sweetly together.

    • They dropped into the river.

    • They were left dangling from the tree branch.

    • The elephant came back for them both.

Task administration: 

This task can be completed with pencil and paper or online (with automarking).

The teacher needs to read the story aloud to the class.

The following instructions are for pencil and paper administration. 

In order to follow the same procedure as the resource trial and thereby ensure the reliability of the difficulty estimates, we suggest you follow these instructions.

  • Hand out the student sheets which should be turned upside down until you have finished reading the passage.
  • Say: "This is a test of your listening skills. I will read the passage and then you will answer questions about it. Listen carefully."
  • Read the introduction and passage. (Please note the suggested reading time of the text is 1 minute.)
  • Say: "Now turn over your sheet. Listen to each question and select the best possible answer. Select only one answer per question. If you wish to change your answer, cross out your first answer and select your new answer."
  • Read out each question and set of options with an approximately 10 second gap between each question.
  • Except in the case of a significant interruption, read the passage and each question and its options only once.
The following instructions are for online administration. 
  • Ask students to read the first two screens of the assessment and then stop until the text has been read to them.
  • Say: "This is a test of your listening skills. I will read the passage and then you will answer questions about it. Listen carefully."
  • Read the introduction and passage. (Please note the suggested reading time of the text is 1 minute.)
  • Say "Now click on 'Next' to go to the first question. Listen to each question and select the best possible answer. Select only one answer per question. If you wish to change your answer, select the new answer by clicking on it."
  • Read out each question and set of options with an approximately 10 second gap between each question. (Alternatively students can select to have the question and options read out to them by clicking on the loudspeaker icon at the bottom of the screen. Note - this option allows students to listen to the questions multiple times should they choose to use it).
  • Except in the case of a significant interruption, read the passage and each question and its options only once.

This is a story from India about a foolish man who got lost. Listen to what happened to him.

Once a foolish man lost his way going from one village to another and asked a young boy he met how to get there.
"Follow this path up around the tree on the river bank," he was told.
When the foolish man came to the tree, he started climbing it, up and up and round and round. At last he crawled out on to a branch that bent down low over the water's edge, to which he clung by his hands. By and by an elephant driver came along the path to water his animal at the river.
The foolish man said, "Great sir, get me down!"
The elephant driver reached up to lift him down, and in doing so dropped his elephant hook. The elephant took this as a sign to go on, leaving the driver hanging to the fool's feet.
The fool said, "Sing out, so that people in the village will come and take us down. Otherwise we shall fall, and the river will carry us away."
The elephant driver started to sing, and he sang so sweetly that the fool let go of the branch to applaud. And so both fell into the water.

Source: Traditional folktale

Level:
4
Curriculum info: 
English, Making meaning, Listening
Keywords: 
listening comprehension, narratives, recall, inference
Description of task: 
Students listen to a folktale to recall information and make inferences.
Answers/responses: 

 

Y8 (08/2000)

a)

Another village. 

very easy

b)

The river.

moderate

c)

the driver dropped his hook.

very easy

d)

tried to clap his hands.

easy

e)

He did exactly as he was asked.

difficult

f)

They dropped into the river.

very easy

Acknowledgements
Every effort has been made to source the origin of the text used in this resource.