Customer Reviews

How to Prepare for the AP French with Audio CDs (Barron's How to Prepare for AP French)

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

I'm French, although I haven't spoken French in a while. I decided to buy this book as a quick review for the AP French Language exam. I found it to be quite helpful, and it had a lot of practice. However, it was disturbing that the book made some egregious grammatical errors, mostly on the verb fill-ins.
Nevertheless, a good prep tool. Cassettes will definately come in handy.

I am a student who used this book to study for the AP French exam . I found the review material excellent. The tapes prepared me for the listening comprehension well and the questions asked were similar to those asked on the actual exam. The book also gives you useful advice on what the examiners are looking for in your essay, which, along with the speaking section counts for 50% of your score. With the help of this book, I was able to receive a score of 5 on the exam!

One of the only study guides for the AP French Language Exam, Barron's does give sample tests and at least an idea about what the exam will be like. However, I have prepared for several other AP exams using "Cracking the AP" by the Princeton Review. These books are much more readable and take an approach of "beating the test." Barron's, by Laila Amiry, seems to be written for AP teachers, not students trying to improve their score. She begins by suggesting ways to, over a long period of time, improve your listening and comprehension skills. While this is a noble thought, as a student right now I am much more interested in getting a four, not on watching numerous movies in French. Especially if the exam is approaching quickly, Barron's is not worth the cost. This is a plea for some book company to write an informative, fun book on how to "beat" the AP French Language Exam.

I'm using this book at the moment to prepare for the exam, so I can't share how well I ended up doing in it. It *is* helpful, especially in the listening and reading sections, and it's always good to get the practice, but the grammar review could have been a lot better and I have seen what I am pretty sure are grammatical mistakes, which, along with some really sloppy editing, made me distrust the rest of the book. It's worth getting, but take it with a grain of salt.

While this book does help the reader to understand how the AP Exam is set up and provides excellent questions for practice, it does not provide many explanations for the answers. I think that it would be very helpful if the reasons why the correct answer is the correct one would help students learn what areas they need to work on more. There have been several times that I have gone through the exercises and then checked my answers after and have been unsure as to why one answer was better than another, especially if more than one answer seemed to make sense.

This is a great book for teachers of any advanced course. We don't have AP French in my high school but we do have IB French and this book has many useful tips that will also help students with the IB test. It is easy to use and has many ideas about preparing students for speaking and writing.

Surprisingly, this book helped me to get a five on AP french. I usually hate Baron's, but this one is not so bad. However, i found some grammar mistakes. Some of the answers don't make sense at all. Overall, this book does help you with the AP test.

I personally detest the book. When I took the practice exams, I followed the steps that the writer suggested. The process made my results worse than if I had approahced the question in my way. The strategies are horrible. There also lacks PROPER explanations. I would highly reccomend a competitor book. Princeton Review is byfar the best.

For the price the book is excellent, it provides good listening practice with 3 Cds, and it is helpful to improve the reading skills with hard paragraps.