Ready for Spanish CLEP?

[margotsara]

I took the 2010 Official CLEP Study Guide practice test for Spanish and got 73.5% of the questions correct. Could I reasonably expect to take the real thing & score a 63, high enough for 12 credits?

Is the Spanish CLEP scaled tough because so many native speakers are taking it?

Any advice/experience appreciated.

[Maniac Craniac]

I took the 2010 Official CLEP Study Guide practice test for Spanish and got 73.5% of the questions correct. Could I reasonably expect to take the real thing & score a 63, high enough for 12 credits?

Is the Spanish CLEP scaled tough because so many native speakers are taking it?

Any advice/experience appreciated.

I'd say that you are very likely to pass. Try taking the Peterson's free practice tests, too. If you can keep doing over 70%, then you are golden.

Some advice; if you have trouble on the listening portion, DON'T PANIC!! You can, in fact, pass this test even if you get every single question on the listening portion wrong (which is statistically unlikely to happen anyway). Be aware that the sound quality on the CLEP exam is just flat out awful, and even if you would normally understand spoken Spanish, you probably won't on the test.

Also, remember to ask for pencil and paper so that you can take notes along the way. This is very important, even for the reading portion of the exam. If there is a key word or grammatical structure that you aren't sure about, you can write it down and see if it pops up later on the list. I did this on the French exam and it helped me to answer about 3 questions.

One last thing, on both the French and Spanish exams, I found that I did not have time to complete every question. So, when you have about 10 minutes left, I would advise you to take note of what question you are on, then go and answer every remaining question with a random answer (I chose C). Then, go back to the last question you answered intentionally, and take your remaining time to get as many questions as you can correct.

For both exams, there were about 10 questions that I simply had to leave a random answer for. However, it is obviously better than leaving them blank

[Maniac Craniac]

The salient points that I can remember from the test are

• Subjunctive- know the subjunctive, both present and past, like your life depended on it. Know when to use it and how to conjugate it.
  
• IF/THEN statements. Equally as important as subjunctive, especially since many constructions of if/then require the past subjunctive.
  
• Indirect vs. Direct object pronouns. Remember that the second person singular direct object is "lo" or "la" but that the indirect object is always "le" + verb + "a"+ noun. Of course, know when to use each.
  

[rmroberts]

I seem to have a different experience from everbody else so maybe it was a fluke, but I made a 77 on peterson's, 67 on rea, and 49 on the real thing (scaled scores). I have heard REA is harder so I don't know if I got a harder test, I just really messed up, or what.

[Maniac Craniac]

I seem to have a different experience from everbody else so maybe it was a fluke, but I made a 77 on peterson's, 67 on rea, and 49 on the real thing (scaled scores). I have heard REA is harder so I don't know if I got a harder test, I just really messed up, or what.

It is harder. It is a lot more nit-picky than the real CLEP is. The itsy bitsy details in REA are ones you generally will not have to worry about in the real CLEP.

One thing about the score: the REA book is all messed up as to which answers go to which questions, so I suggest that you look at all of your answers and compare it to the explanations, as well as compare the explanations to the questions themselves. It might tell you that you have a correct answer when you have a wrong answer and vice/versa.

[burbuja0512]

I totally agree that taking notes is important. There were several exercises where they would read a short paragraph and ask you one question about what you heard. For example, let's say it's a story about a reporter that goes to different countries, they may list off different topics about the reporter's stories and also a list of countries that he's traveled to. Even though I understood the paragraph, I would have had a hard time remembering without the notes.


I had a little bit of difficulty with the different accents in the listening parts. I lived in Mexico for 6 years and felt that very little Mexican Spanish was represented.

I think you should spend the weekend watching Televisa and then go take it. Go to a Spanish church service or an authentic Mexican restaurant and try to speak with your waiter too. I'm not sure that Spanish is one that a week or two of studying could possibly help, so you should probably just do it.

Of course, if you have the time and money, a couple weeks vacation in Mexico wouldn't hurt ;-)

Good luck!