Hi, I was wondering if anyone has had experience with taking the AP Spanish Language course online. This option is not ideal for me, but the only teacher at my school who teaches it is rude, obnoxious, and dislikes me and therefore I’d like to avoid spending another year in their classroom. I would love to take the course, however, because I’ve always gotten good grades and want to minor in it.
To give a you a bit of a background, I’m currently a junior taking Spanish 4. I’m also a non native speaker. I’ve always had a 99 or 100 in Spanish (all four years). However, I’ve always done grammar drills and have never done any true speaking or listening practice. For instance, in my current Spanish 4 class (or “pre-AP” class as my teacher calls it), we haven’t done a single listening or speaking practice all year. My skills in these two domains are horrible- I can’t even sustain a basic conversation, yet I take an upper level class and have a 99. Today we learned about when to use “el” and “la”, something you learn in the first week of Spanish 1. I feel as though I’m losing the little Spanish skills I have.
I’m a little leery of taking AP online, because I’m afraid I won’t get the necessary listening and speaking skills, but I’m also afraid the situation will be the same in the actual school offered course. The question is: should I risk taking it online or take it with a horrible teacher? Have any of you taken the course online? If so, how did you do on the exam and would you recommend it?
Any input is greatly appreciated, thank you so much for your time!
I took AP Spanish online due to a conflict in my schedule. For me, it was a downgrade.
There’s a lack of instructor feedback. Writing assignments will get some generic feedback, not like a real teacher who will point out stylistic or grammatical issues throughout. Speaking assignments are recorded, so the instructor can’t really interject and correct you.
My speaking skills got way worse. In my real Spanish class, we spoke every day, even if it wasn’t like a formal speaking thing. We just spoke in Spanish.
From what it sounds, you haven’t had either of these benefits in your regular class, so I don’t really think there’s a huge disadvantage.
If you can, find an online class where you have speaking projects/assignments/tests where you speak directly with your teacher or another student. Alternatively, try to find a local meetup (you can find one online) with other students to practice with. You could also start a Spanish Club at your school (this would be a good EC) but I guess you’d have to do stuff with your teacher, which might be a no go.
For listening, you can easily find videos on youtube, music, and TV in Spanish. Try to replace some of your daily media intake, that you would normally do in English, with the same content but in Spanish. For instance, I like watching the science videos, so I started watching Minuto de Física on Youtube.
Thank you so much for your response! I hadn’t thought about the listening resources available and will use those to improve my skills in my free time. Ultimately I think I’ll take the class in person and bear through one more year of it though because I’ll have a real teacher to correct me/ask questions rather than a computer or long distance teacher.
Once again, thank you so much for your input! 