AP Chinese without AP Chinese

<p>Has anyone taken the AP Chinese test without being in AP Chinese? I am in Chinese 4 Honors, and looking at some parts of the AP test, I think I might be able to do it. Has anyone else made that jump? I am a non native speaker.</p>

<p>^ I am in the same boat as you and have the same question. I just bought the Barron’s review book, and it was much more advanced than my class. However, I think that a 4 or 5 could be achievable with a lot of self studying. I also think this depends on how rigorous your Chinese program is at school (ours is really new, so it’s not that great yet).</p>

<p>I have a similar question too. If you dont have any chinese courses at your normal high school but you take Saturday chinese classes, would you be qualified to take the AP chinese exams? I know it depends on how good your chinese is, but would you be qualified?</p>

<p>There’s no qualification requirement. Anyone can take an AP test, assuming you can find a site that will administer it.</p>

<p>I was in first-year Chinese with a bunch of kids who’d been to Saturday school. “Oh, <em>that’s</em> what my mom is always saying to me,” was a common comment.</p>

<p>I took the test and got a 5 but I’m a native (my mom taught me though)</p>

<p>I also got the Barron’s just to see the test, and for me it did give me a standard (explained below) and allowed me to be familiar with the test’s set-up </p>

<p>Barron standards- are too high! Even as a native, it is practically impossible to speak as much and with so many flowery language as the highest scoring speaking sections. I spoke a amount closer to a lv 3-4 on the speaking part but without grammar mistakes.</p>

<p>My essay writing is pretty bad according to my parents, but I did incorporate an line from a poem in one of the essays.</p>

<p>The Barron’s book is hard even for natives, especially the culture section. Use it to improve your language skills and know the test format but DON’T stress over speaking as much and as well as the top scoring samples in the book.</p>

<p>Im not a native Chinese but I don’t think it’s such a big jump, it took me a year of learning Chinese to take AP Chinese exam when I was in grade 4.</p>