<p>For those of you who are taking/have taken AP Chinese, what do you recommend to prepare?</p>
<p>Are there any Kaplan/Princeton Review style books out there?</p>
<p>yeah, i've been wondering about this too. Any last year APCHinese takers?? what about level of difficulty??</p>
<p>I haven't taken AP Chinese nor do I know much about it, except that about 80% of test takers got 5's last year.</p>
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I haven't taken AP Chinese nor do I know much about it, except that about 80% of test takers got 5's last year.
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<p>My presumption is that a good majority of the test-takers are native speakers or come from very good prep schools. Not too many schools actually offer Chinese at least in comparison to French of Spanish (I haven't heard of a single non-online high school that offers it in my area.) The Chinese test is probably pretty difficult, but like the Calc BC test, most of the test-takers are very well-prepared to take the exams, meaning higher passing rates and more 5's.</p>
<p>i heard that they were making it harder this year due to the fact so many ppl. got 5's is that true? I am taking it this year, b/c my school didn't realize it needed computers..:(</p>
<p>im trying to take it too! but there arent many schools that offer it! yeah, not many prep books out there but there are ap chinese textbooks. prentice hall publishes ap chinese textbooks:)</p>
<p>大家都准备得怎么样？</p>
<p>去年考过的学生考试难吗？考试包不包括文化和历史？</p>
<p>你们有什么建议，想向你们取取经。。。</p>
<p>to springflowers203: if you're not a native speaker-- that's very, very impressive...if you are--are you gonna take that? What is the benefit of doing that?
Not knowing anything about prep books, I'm just here to answer technique questions on Chinese. Send me a message if you need anything ^^</p>
<p>i am a native speaker. the only reason why i'm taking it is because i don't want to take foreign lang. courses in college.
i took spanish up to level 3 and stopped, because i couldn't fit any more spanish classes into my schedule...so the only language left was chinese...</p>
<p>i think my writing is okay...speaking--i'm not so certain. i don't have an accent or anything. it just sometimes take time for me to think of correct phrases, because i stopped speaking in chinese at home for 2 yrs. now...(maybe that wasn't the best idea). anyways, i hear we have to give a 2 min. "event" speech. did you prepare beforehand for that?</p>
<p>also, how difficult are the mult. choice ques.? do they use everyday, conversational lang.? compared to the sat 2 (if you've taken it), is the ap harder or easier?</p>
<p>thanks!</p>
<p>If you're a native speaker of Chinese, you don't need the AP to get out of the language requirement. A placement test at the language dept will do. As for difficulty, it is a guaranteed 5 for a native speaker, about 2nd year Chinese (in high school classes) for non native speakers. There is a culture part, but should be a piece of cake if you just memorize what you're going to say.</p>
<p>how do you know what to memorize? are the questions basically the same for that portion?</p>
<p>Since the exam is so new I'm actually not sure if there is a set format for it. The past 2 released exams from the CB had basically the same format. Look it up :O</p>
<p>The event speech gives you two minutes per event. I usually finish in less than 15 seconds, which left me with about 1 minute and 45 seconds of awkwardness per event.</p>
<p>how many events are there?
are the ques. like "organize an event for chinese new year" or something like that?</p>
<p>yeah, what were the culture parts? what do they mean by that??
i looked the tests up but the only parts i saw were like they gave up a picture and asked to describe someone's day or something like that ..</p>
<p>They will probably test of Dynasty material or some modern holidays like New Years. The practice brings up food (moon cakes and zongzi's.. yum).</p>
<p>If last year's test was any indication of difficulty, it shouldn't be bad this year. I'm a native speaker...but I'm rather deficient in reading/writing but managed a 5. The reading was a hella lot easier than I'd been anticipating (I practiced for a month through Chinese comic books XDDD). It really wasn't that bad, although I can't guarantee the same for this year. There are English instructions on some parts, and I believe that stumped some natives. Good luck guys!</p>
<p>I don't take the course, but i'm a native speaker (in fact, i went to elementary school in china for two years.) I'm not familiar with the ap thing, but if anyone has any questions. you can pm me.</p>
<p>I took the AP Mandarin test last year, and received a 5. Almost everyone in my AP class did also. (I'm a native.. But some of the students in my class could barely speak Mandarin). In my opinion, I think the questions + the curve makes it really easy to get 5s. </p>
<p>The listening part on the AP Exam is similar to SAT II (I never took the SAT II, but I studied for the AP from SAT II Mandarin prep books). The writing part was okay, but I think I had slight issues of time problems (I wanted to write more, but time was up). The reading comprehension part was extremely easy, and everyone said so at my testing center. </p>
<p>The only 'difficult' part on the AP Mandarin, in my opinion, is the speaking section. But as long as you're able to think up appropriate responses on the spot, you should be fine. Good luck to everyone who's taking it this year!</p>
<p>Hey everyone,</p>
<p>This is so last-minute since tomorrow is the exam (yikes), so hopefully I'll get some responses asap. I'm self-studying, so I was just wondering if anyone could give any input as to how long your responses for the free response section need to be or where I could find sample responses? Thanks!</p>