<p>Hello,
I took AP Spanish Language this year (won't know my score until July 8th), and I'm thinking of taking AP Spanish Lit and Culture next year. My school doesn't offer the course (Spanish Lang is normally reserved to seniors in our school but I skipped Spanish 3 so I ended up in it as a junior) but my teacher is helping me read the first few works now since I'm the only one in the class (our seniors leave early). Has anybody taken it either as a class or just the test? How is it? Also, for anybody who has self-studied, any tips?
Thanks in advance!</p>
<p>I took Spanish Lit as a class this past year. Our teacher would normally have us read each work and then we would list characters, themes, symbols, and rhetorical devices (among other things, but these were the most important). It was very tedious to do this for each work and I honestly feel like it was a little unnecessary. In all honesty I just read 90% of the works in English online. If your Spanish skills are decent enough in order to communicate anything you want in your writing, I think that will suffice. Just make sure you at least skim each work and look for major quotes that may show up on the exam.</p>
<p>The most helpful thing we did all year though was actually learn all of the rhetorical devices - and there are MANY (more than you ever learned in any English class). They WILL show up on the AP exam, and if you don’t know them you’ll be screwed. Also you need to know the authors too. There’s a free response question that asks you to identify the author of an excerpt of a work given. I completely missed this question since I didn’t really take this AP exam as seriously as my other ones.</p>
<p>The way I would approach the exam if I were you would be:
- Read the works in Spanish first (or at least attempt to) and then read them again in English for a deeper understanding.
- Know those literary devices backwards and forwards - they’re all over the MC section.
- Be able to classify each work into each of the “Temas Globales” and know the smaller sub-themes as well that apply to each story.
- Practice writing the essays throughout the year. You’re only supposed to use 15 minutes for each of the two short answer questions.
- Know your authors.</p>
<p>If you were wondering, I got a 4 on the exam. Most of my classmates got 4s and 5s as well. Hopefully this helped!</p>
<p>I’m going to be in the EXACT same situation next year so please let me know how it goes! I talked to my teacher and she recommended that I take an online course senior year like a past student with the same situation did, but I’d really rather self study and go to my schools spanish department teAchers (I am on good terms with another teacher as well who would grade my essays etc as needed) than pay for a course. I haven’t taken ap span Lang yet though so this is of course not definite yet</p>