AP Spanish Language and Culture

Advanced Placement Spanish Language and Culture (often referred to as AP Spanish Language and Culture, AP Spanish Language, AP Spanish V or simply AP Spanish) is a course and examination offered by the College Board in the United States education system as part of the Advanced Placement Program.

This course is primarily a comprehensive review of all previous knowledge pertaining to the Spanish language. This class builds upon the skills developed within introductory and intermediate Spanish classes by applying each skill to a specific, contemporary context (health, education, careers, literature, history, family, relationships, and environment being common themes). Thus, the students strive to refine their skills in writing, reading, speaking, and understanding spoken Spanish. Students concentrate on developing proficiency in such skills specifically in preparation for the AP Spanish Language examination. In addition, this course will emphasize mastery of linguistic competencies at a very high level of proficiency.

Despite the best attempts by the College Board the AP Spanish Language curriculum is very fluid. Individual teachers can choose to present as much or as little information as possible. Because teachers inherently have different methods of pedagogy, issues arise that pertain to the necessity of a standardized Spanish curriculum for the exam. Because the Spanish Language is so eclectic and can be tested in a plethora of manners, a more solidified curriculum covering specific vocabulary, verb forms and usages, expressions, and other facets of the language may be required in the future.

While some students may be concerned about their ability to demonstrate proficiency in an assessment that native speakers of Spanish also take, only the scores of students who study Spanish as a second language are factored when creating the distribution curve of scores 1-5. Native speakers or heritage language speakers of Spanish are then compared to non-native distribution and assigned a score accordingly.

As of May 2017, the exam is divided into seven sections. Section one contains sections of reading comprehension, in which students read four different passages and then answer multiple-choice questions about them. This section is 45 minutes.

Section two contains readings with audio accompaniment, and asks students multiple-choice questions to compare and contrast the two as well as synthesize each one individually. Section three contains audio presentations of approximately three minutes and has multiple-choice questions. The two sections combined are allotted 55 minutes.

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