How To Practice for the AP Spanish Exam: 4 Effective Strategies

This post contains some affiliate links, which means that we make a small commission off items you purchase at no additional cost to you.

With the AP Spanish Exam quickly approaching, teachers may be wondering what they can do to help their students prepare. Here are the things that have worked for my students!

About the Guest Author:

I’m Jamie from Specialty Spanish. I have been a high school Spanish teacher at the same school for 25 years! I specialize in teaching the upper levels of Spanish and though I love teaching AP/Dual Enrollment, my favorite year is Spanish 3! Students really bloom in that year with their ability to create with language!

I started my blog and TPT store during the pandemic. Not surprisingly, I was feeling overwhelmed and burned out in my profession. However, it was a huge, pleasant surprise to find that helping other teachers and creating resources that they need reignited my passion!

When I’m not in the classroom, I can usually be found with my husband at a soccer game or a diving competition! My 2 high schoolers are competitive athletes, and we are never bored! I also enjoy training in Taekwondo, walking my dog in the woods and playing pickleball with my sister!

Feel free to email me at [email protected] if you have any other questions about Test Prep!

Run a Practice AP Spanish Exam

If your school allows you the luxury, run a practice test! One of the big challenges of this exam is preparing students to complete the sections in the amount of time they are given. Even if you school cannot give you 4 hours to do a practice test, it is worth the class time to give students as many tasks as you can and time them using the real time limit. (I say this because when we are learning how to complete these parts during the course of the year, I often give my students more time than the real exam allows.)

Run a Review Session

In the spring, our high school always administers some kind of standardized test. This year it was the SAT for juniors. Teachers are assigned to proctor the exam, but the AP teachers are asked if we would like to hold an AP Exam Review Session for seniors. Can your school do that too?

During the exam review session, you have a good block of time, usually 3-4 hours, where you can work on one or more sections of the AP Spanish Exam with your students. You can choose to do a whole practice exam, or you can choose to focus in on sections with which your students are struggling this particular year.

Other options would be to hold an exam review session during a vacation day or on a weekend. Your district should compensate you for your time, of course.

Plan Ahead

If you have been teaching AP Spanish for a while, you may have noticed that one of the biggest differences between teaching this course and the Spanish Year 1-4 courses is the amount of planning that goes into it! Over the years, I have learned that the best thing I can do for my students is plan ahead and find ways to work in AP Exam-style questions and tasks during the course of the whole year. Trying to teach students strategies for doing all the sections in a short amount of time isn’t nearly as effective.

It’s hard work, but planning out a whole unit leads to deeper learning, well connected sources and activities and better preparation for the AP Exam. This is how I see it. You either spend a big chunk of time planning an entire unit, or you spend smaller chunks of time (but usually MORE time overall) trying to survive week to week or day to day.

Teacher friends and colleagues- I was there in the weeds. For a LONG time. And now I’m not…. and if you’re new, or stuck in survival mode, I have a lot of blog posts that can help you save time and energy! You can find posts on how to plan out a unit, different kinds of projects and how to pace them, hints and tips for each section of the AP Exam, what to teach after the AP Exam and more! Next month, look for my “How To Create an AP Spanish Course Audit” post!

Do ONLY Review The Week Before The Exam

My last piece of advice is to block out the week before the exam for Review Only. Drill the multiple choice sections. The more experience they have with the AP Spanish Exam, the easier it will be for them to detect patterns in question types, to get a sense of how much time they have, etc.

Assign the open-ended tasks. Students can do 4 Simulated Conversations or 4 Cultural Comparisons in one class! They can read/listen to the sources for an Argumentative Essay and develop an intro paragraph twice in one class period! They can do 2 email replies in one class period!

Here is a Freebie to get you started! It’s a strategy hand-out for tackling those MCQ questions! Click here to download it! And be sure to check my free resource library for more related freebies!