Spanish Clep. Please Help!

[jamesconner31]

Hello,

I'm very interested in the Spanish CLEP. I was wondering how difficult (on a scale of 1-10) anyone would say this CLEP is and what they used to study for it. I'm currently in a college spanish class, but it's really just wasting my time.

I have 27hrs of CLEP credit already, but don't want to waste my money if there is no point. Please give me any info you may have.

Thanks,

James

[Maniac Craniac]

Hello,

I'm very interested in the Spanish CLEP. I was wondering how difficult (on a scale of 1-10) anyone would say this CLEP is and what they used to study for it. I'm currently in a college spanish class, but it's really just wasting my time.

I have 27hrs of CLEP credit already, but don't want to waste my money if there is no point. Please give me any info you may have.

Thanks,

James

REA book hands down. It is riddled with flaws, typos, problems with organization and continuity, etc. However, it covers way more than you would ever need to pass the Spanish exam, and the practice tests are a lot more intense than the real thing. Although I already speak spanish pretty well, studying REA helped me immensely in my real-life spanish- not just my exam spanish!!! They will catch you on grammar rules that would make a well-spoken native speaker cry out HUH?! but its great practice for the real thing, which seemed easy in comparison to the REA practice. I don't think I have ever been more ready for a test in my life.

[jamesconner31]

REA book hands down. It is riddled with flaws, typos, problems with organization and continuity, etc. However, it covers way more than you would ever need to pass the Spanish exam, and the practice tests are a lot more intense than the real thing. Although I already speak spanish pretty well, studying REA helped me immensely in my real-life spanish- not just my exam spanish!!! They will catch you on grammar rules that would make a well-spoken native speaker cry out HUH?! but its great practice for the real thing, which seemed easy in comparison to the REA practice. I don't think I have ever been more ready for a test in my life.

1-10 test difficulty? I have two years of spanish from highschool (4 years ago in a podunk highschool) I'm currently in spanish at my college.

[rmroberts]

I took this test after two years of hs spanish and a couple weeks of studying. I made a 49. I got a 77 on the peterson's practice test and a 63 on REA's. So just make sure you're acing REA before you take the real thing.

[jamesconner31]

I took this test after two years of hs spanish and a couple weeks of studying. I made a 49. I got a 77 on the peterson's practice test and a 63 on REA's. So just make sure you're acing REA before you take the real thing.

Where would you have rated your ability/confidence before sitting the exam? How long had you been out of high school?

[jamesconner31]

Re-posting so this goes to the top of the thread list. Please let me know in any information you may have.

[Maniac Craniac]

The reading part of the test is pretty easy, if you are studied up on your Spanish. The listening part is impossible. Truly. The dialogue isn't difficult at all, and it is spoken in a less-than-natural pace, however the quality of the audio is dreadful and you aren't likely to understand too much of it. The good news is, it is more than possible to pass the test, even if you get every single question wrong on the listening portion (which is unlikely to happen according to the laws of probability anyway), because the reading questions far outnumber the listening questions.

The most important point I can remember on the exam was use of the subjunctive and past subjunctive moods. They will throw this at you like toilet paper on mischief night. If there is anything I really suggest you study, it would be your verb tenses and moods (including every combination of tense and mood for if/then questions). Most other questions are nothing more than vocabulary recognition.

Some of the finer points that they are likely to throw at you are idiomatic uses of certain prepositions, false cognates and words that look like they are one gender, but are the opposite (el sistema, la mano, la foto, el programa, etc). However, these are only relatively few questions overall and are only going to prove themselves important if you are either going for a perfect score or don't feel to confident in your ability to pass based upon mastery of the basics.

Above all, do not panic. There are a lot of questions on this test, and you can get a good score even if you feel like you are bombing.

[jamesconner31]

The reading part of the test is pretty easy, if you are studied up on your Spanish. The listening part is impossible. Truly. The dialogue isn't difficult at all, and it is spoken in a less-than-natural pace, however the quality of the audio is dreadful and you aren't likely to understand too much of it. The good news is, it is more than possible to pass the test, even if you get every single question wrong on the listening portion (which is unlikely to happen according to the laws of probability anyway), because the reading questions far outnumber the listening questions.

The most important point I can remember on the exam was use of the subjunctive and past subjunctive moods. They will throw this at you like toilet paper on mischief night. If there is anything I really suggest you study, it would be your verb tenses and moods (including every combination of tense and mood for if/then questions). Most other questions are nothing more than vocabulary recognition.

Some of the finer points that they are likely to throw at you are idiomatic uses of certain prepositions, false cognates and words that look like they are one gender, but are the opposite (el sistema, la mano, la foto, el programa, etc). However, these are only relatively few questions overall and are only going to prove themselves important if you are either going for a perfect score or don't feel to confident in your ability to pass based upon mastery of the basics.

Above all, do not panic. There are a lot of questions on this test, and you can get a good score even if you feel like you are bombing.

Thanks for the info. I'm not going to try and convince anyone that I'm any good at spanish, but I do know a bit. I'm shooting for mediocrity (50) here, so I'll take whatever I can get.

Anyone else have any recommendations? I'll take all of it.

[teeds01]

I speak Spanish daily, however I've never taken any formal Spanish classes (I'm not a native speaker.) I took Peterson's sample test and got a perfect score; big mistake! I got a 62 on the CLEP just shy of getting 12 credit hours at Thomas Edison. (I believe you need a 63). Please forgive me if I'm misquoting numbers. I found the readings towards the end of the test were difficult, some of the vocabulary I have never seen. I think getting a 50 isn't too hard if you've had 2 semesters recently or have a descent vocabulary. Getting a 63+ means you need some extra background.

[rmroberts]

Where would you have rated your ability/confidence before sitting the exam? How long had you been out of high school?

I actually took it a week or two before my last spanish class. I wasn't fluent. I can usually get the jist of a conversation pretty well. And I knew enough to have conversation. I was fairly strong in grammer, but I think the vocab is what killed me. Like I said, I think the practice tests gave me a false sense of confidence. I felt fairly sure I at least had the 6 credits and maybe even the 12.