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Practicing and Administering the Speaking Section of the AP World Language Exams
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by Ken Stewart
Chapel Hill High School
Chapel Hill, North Carolina
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One of the logistical challenges in providing AP world language students with the practice they need involves the setup and recording of the speaking tasks. The exact type of task depends on the language. Teachers are encouraged to see the French, German, Spanish, and Italian Language and Culture Course Descriptions, where complete details pertaining to the speaking section of each particular exam may be found.
 Course Descriptions
There are a number of scenarios that a school and individual teacher might consider when practicing these tasks with their students before the day of the exam in order to get quality voice recordings. The size of the class and/or the number of students being tested will determine what is best suited for a particular group of students.
Some of the precautions that proctors and teachers should take include testing the equipment in advance, making sure there is ample space so that students are not seated too closely together, and whenever possible, simulating the testing conditions throughout the school year. Some students may not be able to do their best work if the setting is drastically changed when they are expected to speak. If the students have been practicing for the exam and doing their individual speaking assignments in isolation, it may be distracting to put them all in a large room on AP Exam day. In order to optimize conditions, schools may consider the following strategies, many of which are suggested in the AP Coordinator's Manual:
- Avoid testing in large areas such as gymnasiums, auditoriums, and cafeterias.
- Hold all PA announcements and school bells until the exam is over.
- Avoid recording where there are telephones or other possible interruptions.
- Check with administrators to avoid fire drills during the testing weeks.
- Avoid overloading the students so that they can focus on the task as hand. For example, if a language laboratory is being used for the exam, minimize the amount of manipulation of machinery by the students.
Some of our most accomplished AP language teachers offer the additional following scenarios that may be considered for practicing and recording the speaking sections.
Scenario: Making do with a portable "listening laboratory" that cannot record all the students at the same time.
Solution: Within the language classroom, seat four to six students facing away from each other around the perimeter of the classroom. Each student has a headset connected to the listening laboratory and a cassette recorder. By placing students apart from each other, they are not distracted by sitting all together to record in a room that has no sound barriers between students. The remaining students wait together for their turn to record in a monitored room. Once the first set of students finish making their recordings and leave the room, the next group enters the testing room. (In order to preserve the integrity of the AP Exam, it is imperative that students who have completed the recordings do not have contact with students who are waiting to be tested.)
An alternative to the portable laboratory is to have the proctor operate the master CD player and boom box in the center of the room while the students are seated around the perimeter, each with a smaller cassette recorder. Again, it is critical that the students not be seated too closely together so as to avoid too much interference and to comply with College Board regulations about student proximity.
Scenario: Using a digital laboratory.
Solution: While most schools still use cassette tapes to record, some schools record the students' voices in digitized MP3 format. This is the ideal recording situation for many reasons. The digital files, recorded on CDs, reduce the technical problems of broken cassettes, wrong speed settings, and blank recordings. Furthermore, with less manipulation of the equipment by the students, there is less chance of a technical difficulty. Each student's sound files must be recorded on his or her own separate CD. Digital recordings are also less expensive and produce a higher quality recording.
Scenario: Creating a makeshift language laboratory.
Solution: Using three-sided presentation boards (found at office supply stores for around $10 each), the class can make their own recording "booth" to simulate a language laboratory. To save even more money, cut each board in half horizontally. The students then sit at their desks in the classroom and put a board on their desk to give them a makeshift booth, thereby minimizing distractions from the other students. When the time comes to respond orally, the students simply lean a little forward and speak into the tape players that are on their desks. Not only do the presentation boards provide privacy, they also minimize some unwanted noise so that each student feels that he or she has a little personal space. The visual barrier seems to help as well.
To record, each student uses a Sony Pressman or similar cassette recorder that can be purchased for as little as $20 each and that can be stored in plastic sandwich bags. Students listen to the master recording on a boom box and record their responses on the individual cassette recorders. The students can practice this in the classroom all year and then just take the equipment to the room where the test is administered on exam day. The total investment for 20 tape recorders, the cardboard dividers, storage boxes for the tape recorders, and large bin and box for the dividers comes to no more than $500. This setup allows for all the students to record simultaneously and avoids the "holding room" described earlier. The students also are able to practice all year on the equipment that they will use on the day of the exam. Each tape recorder is numbered and the students use the same recorder all year. This keeps the stress level down. Finally, a cassette binder can be used to store the students' tapes.
Scenario: Taping and scoring large numbers of practice sessions.
Solution: It is essential that the students practice recording throughout the year with the same equipment they will be using on the day of the exam. Geneviève Delfosse, an AP French teacher at Thomas Jefferson School for Science and Technology in northern Virginia, offered this solution for minimizing the work involved in grading large numbers of practice sessions:
To practice frequently during the year, we use a set of small manual recorders (Sony). We have about 80 of them for our department (for all six languages). They are about $20 each. Since there are many AP students in the French program, it is not realistic for me to grade five minutes of speaking for each student, so I incorporate self-evaluation into the test.
First, I discuss the tasks, the scoring guidelines, and the strategies that lead to a good performance with the class, and then send half of the students to the hallway to practice on their own while waiting for their turn to tape. The other 13 or 14 students spread around the classroom and are given a task similar to the AP oral evaluation.
Students practice and speak as they will do on the real AP Examination. When they have finished recording, they rewind their tapes and go out in the hallway while the other students come in the classroom and do the same. While the second group is recording, the students in the hallway transcribe what they have spoken. I ask my students to write the transcriptions on alternate lines, and before they turn them in for a grade, they have to circle the mistakes they have spotted and put the correct answers in the blank lines above. This strategy saves me a huge amount of time (compared to grading the tapes by myself) and it allows students to immediately know how they performed, instead of having to wait 10 days.
I grade each recording 100 points, like a test, using the AP scoring guidelines to grade the students' performances (the transcription and correction counts for 20 points). I can grade a whole class's tests in 55 minutes, and I return them the following day.
Scenario: Using space outside the classroom.
Solution: Elba Rocha, who teaches AP Spanish in Las Vegas, offered the following solution:
For individual practice sessions, I set up two tape recorders in nearby colleagues' classrooms who have planning periods during my AP class time. On the left recorder, I set up the master tape so that students do not have to be concerned about starting and stopping it until the end of the practice. On the right recorder, I put a blank tape where students record following the directions given on the left recorder (the master tape). Once the practice is finished, students rewind the tape in the left (master) recorder, but leave the right one where it stopped for the next student. I usually do this type of practice once a week while students are doing some individual work that they can make up later.
The library is the main room where most of the actual AP Exam is administered. With the librarian's help, we set up four different rooms that connect to the library (career center, small computer room, library storage room, and principal's conference room). These rooms interconnect, but they all have separate exits that assure the security of the test (once students finish recording, they leave the room and do not have access to the main library room where other students are still waiting to record). I also have one main proctor and three helping proctors who supervise the different stations.
AP teachers are not allowed to proctor their own students' exams; however, they can proctor the exams for other courses. For example, a Spanish teacher may proctor the AP French exam and a French teacher may proctor the AP Spanish. Again, proctors should be refer to relevant sections of the AP Coordinator's Manual, where complete details pertaining to the speaking section of each particular exam may be found.
AP Coordinator's Manual
My thanks to the following teachers for sharing their best practices: Genevieve Delfosse, Elba Rocha, Joan Drobnis, María José Lloréns, Ingrid Robledo, Michael Ferger, and Gilda Nissenberg.
Ken Stewart teaches Spanish and chairs the world languages department at Chapel Hill High School in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. He leads workshops and summer institutes as a consultant for the College Board AP Spanish Program and has served as a Reader and Table Leader for the AP Spanish Exam. He serves as the content adviser for Spanish on AP Central. Ken received his National Board certification in world languages in 2003. He is a member of American Association of Teachers of Spanish and Portuguese. In 1998, he was named Central North Carolina Teacher of the Year.
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