REA spanish audio and CLEP scoring

[astrojeff]

Glad I found this forum. I am self-taught in Spanish and now need a 63 or higher on the CLEP in order to avoid taking college credits as a prerequisite for a job application. I've got one chance to take the CLEP in the next month and save myself a few thousand dollars on tuition.

I've been working on my REA study guide for a couple weeks and I'm wondering how its scoring compares with the actual test. My concern is that I was pretty frustrated with the listening portion--got about 50% of those questions right (25% would be due to random guessing), but I got about 95% on the grammar section. I scored in the low 100s, which corrected to 80 on the first practice test, but I was skeptical of the REA scoring method, which combined the total score of listening and grammar before looking up your corrected score in the table. Anything above a 100 out of 130 gets you a normalized 80. So my first question is can I really completely bomb the listening part and completely make up for it in the written/grammar portion? According to that book I can.

I'm not that bad at understanding spoke spanish, but I either forget the question by the time I've heard all answers, or I tend to get hung up on a word when listening to something out of context for the first time. I've seen some advice here on taking notes during the audio portion, which I will try on the next audio test, but I think I'll have the same problem of failing to hear the remaining dialog as I'm writing--it just went so fast for me that I'm not sure I can write notes fast enough. No, I can't write shorthand, unfortunately. There's no pause between the listening portion and the answering portion, and there's hardly even enough time to read all the answers before the next audio question starts up. Is there any pause allowed between questions on the real test?

I see that I can take the Peterson tests online--is that correct? Is it worth it compared to the REA test book & CD? I really just need to practice more of the audio tests, not so much the written test. Otherwise, I'm listing to spanish podcasts & lessons all the time (Cody's cuentos, SSL4U, learning like crazy II), watching telenovelas online, and doing everything I can to hone my audio skills, but I think it's a matter of getting used to the uncomfortable CLEP format of the audio test. And if I really can offset the audio with my grammar portion, perhaps I shouldn't worry so much.

[NAP]

Welcome to the forum!

You really have been working hard to immerse yourself in the language.

Yes, be sure to take the Peterson's exams:

http://www.degreeforum.net/general-educa...ement.html

I have read that REA is good for this, and I think Peterson's will help you feel even more prepared for this exam. (You can probably just do the listening sections, if you want.)

Let us know how it goes.

[astrojeff]

Thanks NAP!

I really appreciate the link to the free practice tests. I took one of them before taking my CLEP. Passed with a 76! All I needed was a 63, so I'm good to go.

I'll offer a quick comparison of the two practice tests:

The REA practice tests were pretty similar in terms of the reading part of the CLEP. The Peterson online tests had a similar format in the reading part, but were slightly easier than the CLEP exam.

The listening portion for the REA exam was much harder than the actual test, in my opinion. I was pretty frustrated with the listening section in my practice tests and was quite worried I might not do well on the actual exam. But after taking the Peterson practice test, their listening section was almost exactly at the same level of difficulty as the CLEP (way easier than the REA practice tests), and I felt much more confident going in to the test center today. One more thing I'll add is that the CLEP listening portion was very quiet and very low quality (probably recorded off an old tape), so in that regard it was harder to understand than the Peterson's test. Luckily, I took in my own high-quality earphones and was able to get permission from the proctor to switch from their crappy pair. I couldn't hear a thing through their earphones and it could have messed up my score if I had used them! It was still too quiet on my earphones--not sure if that was the testing center's computer, or the CLEP exam itself?

I didn't use the Peterson's site for review, but I did the full review exersises in the REA book. They were helpful, but not well designed. They were full of errors and just really odd explanations that made me think they were not well redacted. For the nth edition that I had, I'd expect it to be a little higher quality. Still useful for practice material, however, so I still recommend it over nothing. But I can't compare to Peterson's.

Cheers,

Jeff

[NAP]

Awesome score! Congratulations!

Thanks for the feedback on the REA and Petersons.

Poor sound quality is a common complaint. Sorry; I forgot to mention that to you. I'll have to remember your tip of taking my own headphones.

How do you think the 2 sections (listening vs grammar) balanced out for you on the real exam for your final score?

You did a great job! I am so happy for you!

[astrojeff]

I had seen comments on bad sound quality, but I wasn't expecting it to be so quiet. I was thinking, "you've got to be joking" when I maxed out the voume button on my test. Even with my earphones, I had to press them on my ears to overcome the ambient room noise. But I understood almost everything with a little effort, so it wasn't a disaster.

I think I balanced to two sections fairly well. It still make me curious if you can just bomb the listening part and make it up in the reading comprehension part, but luckily I didn't need to worry about that. I was getting about 50% right on the REA listening portion (half of which were from wild guesses) versus 95% right on the Peterson's test (Most of which were confident choices). I'd guess I got about 90% right on the actual test. On a few questions I know I understood the passage well, but some of the questions were specific enough that I forgot the detail they were asking.

Also, the internet connection crashed on me in the middle of one of the listening questions (thank god the server saves your intermediate score and time), and by the time they logged me back in 15 minutes later, I could not remember the passage well enough to answer the question--of course I couldn't go back! I have some sort of bad luck because my first attempt at taking the test a month or so back was interrupted and refunded because the server was malfunctioning. The testing centers around here and apparently the CLEP servers are working on some ancient equipment!

The real CLEP test had more lists of things to remember than I had seen on any of the study portions. You know, stuff like: "jose wakes up every morning and listens to music before showering, then he gets dressed, reads the paper, eats breakfast, and excersises before going to work" Then, the question would have a list of items that you have to put into order--listening to music, getting dressed, going to work, excersising--for example. You could almost tell during the passage that it was going to be a list question, so luckily I did take notes on the order of things and it was useful to remember. But a few times, I was thinking afterwards, hmmm... did he read the paper first, or listen to music first... it's easy to forget even if you understood it correctly in the first place.

So there were definitely a couple listening questions that I know I guessed, and a few others I was not 100% sure, but I felt confident about the majority of them. Same with the reading section. I was confident about most of it, but there were a few words or grammar points that I was wavering over. So I'm pretty sure each section weighed approximately the same in my exam.

[MissCLEP]

Hey astrojeff!

I just sent you a pm with a few questions. Thanks!