Customer Reviews

How to Prepare for the AP Spanish with Audio CDs (Barron's AP Spanish (W/3 CDs))

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This book definitely wasn't up to the caliber I was hoping for. I purchased it due to the urgent need for an ap book after the discovery that the one I really wanted was unavailable. One major complaint was the lack of practice tests. Yes there are practice questions for each section on the test, but I had hoped to take a full length practice test as well as have the ability to guage my final score. This may seem inconsequential, but I did notice a discrepancy in the very tiny grammar review at the end of the book. It seems to contradict itself by first saying the past participle of maldecir is both maldecido and maldicho not many pages later. Maybe this is just some aspect of spanish obvious to everyone but me....I don't know. At this point I can only pray that my five years of spanish experience is good enough to get me through this test tomorrow, since I doubt this ap book will do me much good. However, to give it credit, it comes with these handy CDs with practice listening sections. I suppose we'll see when my ap results come back in July.

I wouldn't call this book the ultimate test prep book, but I don't think such a book exists for the AP Spanish exam. After all, the exams tests one's cumulative knowledge of Spanish gained over the years and no book can provide someone with a high level of language profiency. Instead, the book provides a good deal of practice for the exam.

Besides multiple choice and fill-in-the-blanks, it also includes pictures to study for the two-minute speaking section and a CD with prompts for the directed response (speaking). I found both the CD and the pictures especially helpful in preparing for the exam on my own.

Other plusses of this book are the vocabulary lists and grammar overview, although I did not have enough time to utilize these throughly.

To those considering using this book I would recommend buying it early and preparing from it earlier than the weekend before the exam, as I did. Still, the book did provide me with helpful practice and information, and I got a 5 on the exam.

However, be aware that no book will allow you to succeed on the exam if you are not proficient in Spanish. Not this book, nor any other book.

Alice G. Springer may have a Ph.D. but she sure doesn't know how to read, write or understand spanish in the appropriate way. She's the alleged author of this book, a spanish professor in Nashville. This book helps the student (like me) who hasn't taken the Ap Spanish course at school because it gives you an idea of the sections in the exam. For example, the listening, writing, etc. This book has numerous errors, one in every page (or two + in some too). The audio tapes are the leasts of your worries, they have the least errors in them, but it seems that they confuse the articles la and ?l. Since the author clearly is thinking in englsih while writing this book, she forgets that in spanish, everything has an article determining femenine or masculine, while english doesn't. She translates it too literal, she might even use an automated translator in some cases it seems. For example:
The boy got the garden hose. She erroniously translates it as: "El ni?o agarr? manguera" or in some cases "El ni?o agarro el manguera" the correct way is: El ni?o agarr? la manguera. She forgets to use the artivles since "the" in english is neutral and doesn't represent either femenine or masculine. The other one, she thinks that she has to use the article reffering to the subject but this too is wrong. (I KNOW THIS EXAMPLE IS NOT A VERY GOOD ONE, BUT IM WRITTING A LETTER TO THE EDITORIAL TO CLARIFY ALL THEIR ERRORS AND I'LL GLADLY POST IT AND POST THE RESULTS AS WELL. THe fill in the blank parts also DO NOT specify in what tense they want them and you cannot identify it by the context either. Example FROM THE BOOK:

4 WORDS ARE UNDERLINED (I put the letter following the word) , SELECT THE ONE THAT IS GRAMMATICALLY INCORRECT.
2. (pg. 143) A los alumnos no le(A) gusta el(B) profesor que le(C) d?(D) demasiada tarea.

THEY POINT OUT THAT THE CORRECT ANSWER IS C so they say that the sentence would say:
A los alumnos no le gusta el profesor que leS d? demasiada tarea.
See, Alumnos(plural) and le(singular) don't go together. It should be les, but they say that in the response section, so that means that they typed it wrong, what a shame, another exercise is lost because its typed wrong..... but they have more than 10 per section!!!... that's right but 9 out of 10 generally are ruined by typeos... or incorrect spelling or careless typing of the typer.. too bad that the editor didn;t catch all those, even so, the author... she should at least get ehr name off that book, it looks bad.

I WILL WRITE MORE THINGS LATER I HAVE TO GO STUDY AND ILL SURELY BE POSTING MORE SO EXPECT SOME MORE CRITIQUES!

I don't know if it was due more to the book or to my prior study, but in any case I am happy with the result that I got after using this book!