<p>How hard is it? what is the test curve? Is there any place i can find practice? any recommendations?</p>
<p>Well, I saw that you posted this in High School Life also, but this seems like a better place to respond:</p>
<p>I will take Spanish Lang next year, and from what I hear about it, it is difficult for nonnative speakers. The curve is skewed because so many native speakers take the test and score highly. In order to be prepared for the test, one must have good speaking, writing, and listening comprehension skills. For practice, try some of College Board’s released tests from past years.</p>
<p>I took the AP Spanish Lang exam this past month. I am far from a native speaker (Asian, ftw) but I thought it was pretty easy. I’m confident that I got at least a 4. I think the area that I was most lacking in was the speaking part; make sure you know a lot of transition phrases and are able to use them with ease.</p>
<p>I don’t see how native speakers can mess up the curve that much… Every native speaker I know doesn’t know grammar to save their lives.</p>
<p>the test has a listening and speaking portion so even if they suck at writing correctly, native speakers will score big on the other two sections since collegeboard cut out the fill-ins which are the most grammar-based.</p>
<p>personally, i’m pretty good at speaking and writing, but horrible at reading and listening (because of the unfamiliar vocabulary). what i should have done is exposed myself to more spanish, just gone online and read spanish articles, listened to anything online in spanish.
i thought it was very hard. certain sections, such as the short writing, are very very easy. you usually “write an email to a friend” about a vacation, your schoolday, an upcoming wedding, something along those lines. all the other sections are a lot harder though. for the long writing, you also have to be good at reading and listening, since the sources they provide you with are written and spoken. for the speaking, you have to know how to listen. etc. i found that a challenge - if you’re bad a one thing, such as listening, it can hurt you throughout the test.</p>
<p>and also — it is not a grammar based test. i always excelled in spanish grammar, and i though it would help me in AP spanish. it helped me in the class itself, but not on the test whatsoever. the only grammar you need in the test is in your writing/speaking. and if you don’t know how to conjugate a verb in a certain tense, you can just not use that tense.</p>
<p>i think native speakers definitely throw off the curve.</p>
<p>So for the test vocab is more important than grammar and being able to conjugate verbs?</p>
<p>@rk33- yes definitely. I’m like ll0124. I was very good at formulaic fillling in the right verb tenses in sentences with blanks but that really didn’t help on the test except in the writing. In speaking, you need to be quick on your feet and understand what is being asked of you. Same with listening, if you don’t understand what they’re talking about or get the gist right away, you’re screwed, or at least I was. Listen to and read a lot of spanish texts and try to make sense of what they’re saying. You’ll increase your vocab and comprehension at the same time.</p>
<p>What spanish classes did you take before AP Spanish? I’ve taken I and II and was supposed to take III online but thats not happening.</p>