<p>ItsAllJibberish, I'm fairly certain that at the 2 minute mark, the raters just turn off the tape. They won't disqualify you.</p>
<p>Our test ended up being 5 hours long (and we didn't even have to rotate labs like some people did!). </p>
<p>I'm fairly good at listening and think I did pretty well on it, and I even understood most of the ridiculously fast last long dialogue. As for the readings, they weren't awful, but it is bad enough trying to figure out meaning and metaphors and whatnot in English, much less Spanish. The speaking, well, we've been doing those practice conversations all year in lab, but it hasn't helped much. What always ends up happening is I end up forgetting a word and getting a flustered. The formal oral wasn't too bad though, because I'd managed to take enough notes to speak for two minutes.</p>
<p>I'm pretty sure they won't disqualify you. In the informal speaking, if you speak after the 20 seconds (the beep), they just ignore it. I'm sure they'll just ignore your last 10 secs.</p>
<p>I honestly thought the first half of the exam was easier than anything I expected. I walked in thinking I'd bomb multiple choice, but somehow I finished it with 20 minutes to check over everything, which made me feel good. sentence completions was pretty easy too, and so was the informal writing. i got in a lot of idioms there. just after that, i had speaking, which was weird b/c i'm a pretty fast spanish speaker and so I'd finish my answer way before 20 seconds and would just keep stuttering and repeating myself for the next 20 seconds. And then, as I mentioned, my last 2 parts of phone convo were totally f**ked because my proctor spoke at the part when you're supposed to "dile detalles", and i screwed up after that point. but i did say goodbye at end, mind you with a lot of stuttering as well. and then the formal speaking, i stuttered after tripping on a word (I totally forgot the two countries they talked about and spent a good 10 seconds flipping through the book to find paraguay/puerto rico again), and then i was about 10 seconds overtime. bleh, that formal speaking was the worst formal speaking i've ever given, but at least i had a good intro and covered everything needed (i guess). and then formal writing was pretty simple i thought, though i don't think i encorporated any sophisticated rhetoric (ie subjunctive, etc). i felt like i just quoted the passages for about a good third of it. </p>
<p>i'm wishing for a 5, but depending on how much speaking hurt me, i might get a 3 or 4. hopefully 4.</p>
<p>I didn't finish my formal essay (the one on tourism). I wrote about 1 1/2 pages, so over 200 words..but I didn't get to use the audio source. What's the best score I can get out of the possible 9?</p>
<p>It's actually scored out of five. And I think you need to cite all three to get a 4 or 5 out of five, so that might be a 3 out of 5. or i think maybe a 4, depending on the quality of the rest of it.</p>
<p>don't think i did too badly. 4 or 5 surely ;). everything was good except that last dialogue, (damn you Malinche)- all i heard was blahblahblahblahblahblah(author:eheheh randomly in the middle of the dialogue)blahblahblahblah. apart from that everything was okay</p>
<p>I have a question-- On the informal writing, I did everything the way it said except I forgot about the part that said school function and made a different excuse up. But other than that I followed everything the way the exam said. How much will I lose for this?</p>
<p>dude, that lady hesitated like no other. i could've sworn, for the first five seconds she said "ehhhhhhh.......ehhhhhhhhhhhhh...."</p>
<p>how much of the test is the speaking portion worth? i think i did well on all the parts besides speaking (it wasn't a complete failure, just very very low quality. max a 3 out of 5, i'm guessing). i mean i think i made a few mistakes here and there on m/c but i felt really confident about it overall. can i still get a 4 or 5?</p>
<p>speaking: informal is worth 10% and formal is worth 10%
reading comp is worth 30%
listening comp is worth 20%
fill-ins w/ root and w/o root are each worth 2.5%
writing formal is 20% and informal is 5% (im not sure about the last two)</p>
<p>Did anyone else mostly plagarize the written sources in the formal writing? I pretty much just picked random lines out, and copy them into my essay which was rediculously long--2 1/2 pages.</p>
<p>Pretty much did the same with the formal speaking, except, you know, speaking.</p>
<p>We used the Prentice Hall preperation book as well, which I guess did a pretty good job predicting the format...but, in regard to the informal speaking (we had practiced these many times), I still do not know how to say goodbye and "confirm details" with somebody for 20 seconds...WHO DOES THAT? If somebody was staring at me saying goodbye for 20 seconds I would revoke all offers of Shakira. I was also tempted in the informal speaking to just threaten the listener to give me a 5 and not bother to speak (decided against it) and I was also tempted, because we had been told by our teacher to "really get into the convo", say "WHO ARE YOU?! I DONT SPEAK SPANISH, I AM ONLY A STUDENT....WHY AREN'T YOU LISTENING!" but instead I just mumbeled and froze up, but I think I did well on the rest of the test.</p>
<p>You guys all talk about going to the "lab" for the oral exam--what does that mean? My crappy-ass public school only had 5 tape recorders, so we went from 8-3 just trying to fit everybody in. But we didn't even have headphones during the speaking section. Were we supposed to? Because it was ridiculously hard giving your 2 minute oral presentation and hearing everybody else doing theirs too. I'm pretty sure this wasn't how it was supposed to go, and it definitely messed up my score. Did you guys have this same problem, or did you have headphones to block out the noise? Should I complain? I think it's kinda unfair if people did get some kind of noise block and we had to take the test without it, it was very distracting. </p>
<p>Also, on my formal writing thing I used all 3 sources but forgot to cite them. Ouch. How much do you think they'll penalize me?</p>
<p>I think I would have done well on the fill-in-the-blank verb thing had I not forgotten to check for subjunctive indicators. I'm so mad at myself! Was there a lot of subjunctive on that thing? Because I pretty much put everything in the past...</p>
<p>Also, did anybody else self-study from Barrons? Because they told us we would be able to listen to the convo once before having to respond...I am ****ED, I kept practicing for that and I got into the room and was like...whaat? Grr...</p>
<p>LOl, who didn't cite directly from the sources? My formal presentation...just a recitation of the articles. </p>
<p>btw, did anyone else feel that their was really not that much that could be said--the fact that the presentation is supposed two minutes long (and the radio thing was two minutes long itself) just screams "BS"!</p>
<p>Orchard, that sucks that you do not have a lab, in response to your question we have a "language lab" which is basically there only for the foreign language AP exams. Its about 20 computers with headsets and a a program with a master control for the teacher and it basically does everything but speak Spanish for you.</p>
<p>Our school is most certainly not financially troubled in any way at all (far from it), but we still didn't use a language lab. Instead, one by one they'd call you out during the formal writing to go into this other room with a separate proctor to do the speaking exercises. Our school feels that if you're in a language lab you might get disturbed by the other people talking at the same time.</p>
<p>ItAllJibberish, your school is right in regard to being disturbed by others...even with headsets and dividers between us there was a constant faint mumbling in the backround that really distracted me. Wasn't it awkward being alone in a room with a proctor and speaking and having him/her staring at you? Also, a question to anybody, what in the world keeps teachers from cheating on the AP exams...like opening one up and telling their kids whats on it ect. Our giving extra time, i mean there are so many things they could do, you would think this would be a problem</p>
<p>Regarding the first question, my proctor just sat there reading People magazine during the recording. And then she started giving me random recording advice on how to be more audible while the guy was talking during the phone convo. and i couldn't hear a word of what he said at that point. and that completely screwed me over at that point. that f**ker. but besides that, it's not really awkward since the proctor is either playing with her fingernails or reading People.</p>
<p>Regarding the cheating, you just hope one of the proctors/students has enough integrity to report it if he/she notices anything. that's all you can really do, but i mean, cheating's inevitable anywhere, even in the real world. except when it happens there you go to jail (ie martha stewart) rather than simply getting a 0 on your ap exam.</p>