Spanish CLEP in 3 months; Need a 50 Please Help! Question at bottom!

[therealgageb]

Hello Spanish speakers. I'm in a bit of a pickle. I need to score a 50 on the Spanish CLEP exam so I can get the 6 credits I need to finish my liberal arts degree before I transfer to my 4 year in January. I want to take the test in December so I have really have 3 months to study . I have been on Duolingo for most of the summer and I have about 8100 xp. I have also been listening to this podcast Coffee Break Spanish while I'm at work which has been pretty helpful.

But I feel like this is definitely not enough. Im going to take the REA practice exam tomorrow so I can get an Idea of where I'm at... but realistically I know I'm way off course. I know for sure I need to get my reading comprehension way up. I've been looking for resources all night and the most promising ones I've found have been Spanish Hour (though it looks old and janky), Modern States, and the college board CLEP Spanish Study guide. I also found this reddit post with lots of helpful readings helping with grammar and conjugations. https://www.reddit.com/r/clep/comments/e7jb7x/passed_spanish_with_a_70/But

But I don't know where to start and I need to know what is the best resource or at least where should I focus my study to get that 50 in December??? Please help before I freak out!!

[rachel83az]

You're going to want to study for at least an hour every day. An hour and a half or two hours would be even better. Duolingo is good but Busuu is even better. Pay for it, $12/mo., I believe. If you can get to a mid-A2 level or so, you should be good for passing the test. My advice:

• 30 minutes per day on Modern States
  
• 30 minutes per day on Busuu
  
• Duolingo whenever you would otherwise be playing a game on your phone
  
• Drops is a good vocabulary app; pay for that one as well
  
• Watch Peppa Pig in Spanish on YouTube 
  
• Watch Destinos - should be on YouTube as well
  
• Start listening to books in Spanish from Librivox. It's okay if you don't understand them at first. The idea is to get your brain used to the sounds and rhythms of Spanish. 
  
• If you like music, start listening to music in Spanish. There are apps and websites that let you listen to Spanish radio. If you know some songs, you can also make a playlist on Spotify 
  

Honestly, this is all probably overkill and you could get away with ModernStates and probably Duolingo. If you really, really, REALLY need to pass this exam specifically, though, I would put in the extra studying effort.

[PrettyFlyforaChiGuy]

I definitely agree that watching shows with subtitles and listening to music will help you along. Back in the Long Long Ago when I was learning Portuguese and Japanese, I used to just enter online chat rooms for speakers of those languages and make basic conversation by reading along with the chat. It helped me pick up a lot of slang and natural speech, while also improving my reading speed just by the very act of trying to follow along.

There are apps now that would accelerate this process, with many of the good ones already getting mentioned above. A few others you might like include HelloTalk or FluentU (only free for 14 days, though). If you want the old-school feeling of having a pen-pal somewhere around the world, the Slowly app lets you write e-postcards to other language learners... which can then take a real-world day or two to arrive. It's kind of quaint to tell someone around the world about your day and read about theirs, usually a day after the fact.

[Kab]

Hi there therealgageb !
I´m a Spanish speaker. I will talk to you from this perspective.
I see that you just joined to ask for help in Spanish....and in reddit too. .
I can assure you that everything rachel83az wrote is correct. Depending where you are Netflix allow you to select the language. If you have Netflix select some Spanish speaking shows and put undertitles....in Spanish.
Practice makes king, more in languages. So practice even when you think you know it.
Learn some theory. I cannot put enough emphasis here. Specially when to use "ser" and "estar" verbs and how to use the subjunctive in Spanish. A lot of mistakes there usually.

[rachel83az]

Now that I'm on my computer and not my phone, here is Peppa Pig on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCBErs5A...fVRNj9ogAQ If you don't understand ANYTHING, watch it at 0.75 or 0.50 speed at first.

Destinos: https://www.learner.org/series/destinos-...o-spanish/ Spoken in relatively slow Spanish (at least at first). There is a workbook and exercises to go along with it but these are not necessary. Watch. Enjoy the story. Here's a playlist on YT to make it easier to keep track of which episodes you've watched: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL...x3l2A-arG2 It looks like there are 52 approximately 30-minute episodes.

The BBC did their own thing with Castellano (Spain) Spanish. Original page here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/languages/spanish/m...ails.shtml Playlist on YT here: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL...Vz46bchbU4 You're probably going to want to focus on Mexican Spanish, however, even though they are largely the same.

[CableGuy98]

Hello Spanish speakers. I'm in a bit of a pickle. I need to score a 50 on the Spanish CLEP exam so I can get the 6 credits I need to finish my liberal arts degree before I transfer to my 4 year in January. I want to take the test in December so I have really have 3 months to study . I have been on Duolingo for most of the summer and I have about 8100 xp. I have also been listening to this podcast Coffee Break Spanish while I'm at work which has been pretty helpful.

But I feel like this is definitely not enough. Im going to take the REA practice exam tomorrow so I can get an Idea of where I'm at... but realistically I know I'm way off course. I know for sure I need to get my reading comprehension way up. I've been looking for resources all night and the most promising ones I've found have been Spanish Hour (though it looks old and janky), Modern States, and the college board CLEP Spanish Study guide. I also found this reddit post with lots of helpful readings helping with grammar and conjugations. https://www.reddit.com/r/clep/comments/e7jb7x/passed_spanish_with_a_70/But

But I don't know where to start and I need to know what is the best resource or at least where should I focus my study to get that 50 in December??? Please help before I freak out!!

I've never tested via CLEP for Spanish but I would assume CLEP proably falls within the ILR (which I have tested for) somewhere in the level 1/1+/2 range- my question to you is this- do you already have any basic spanish skills? Are you familiar with the Ar, Er , Ir verbs and how to conjugate them? Do you have any experience with speaking in the present tense, and are you familiar with the two past tenses? My point is, it's going to take a bit more than 30 minutes a day to get you where you want to be in 2 months (we're midway through Sept)..  Duolingo and the free apps aren't bad but very limited- not a fan of rosetta stone (for language learning, but they ARE good for vocabulary building).. Might be worth it to check out this software: https://fluenz.com/ it's far superior to Rosetta or other programs out there- for what you're looking to do, level 1 should suffice or if you already have some background, then level 2 would be appropriate and so on... Immerse yourself in whatever you can that's in Spanish.. (newspaper, online articles, news, movies etc.) you won't understand every word, but it will help you understand how the language is used- which will be helpful come test time.. it's a beautiful language and clearly growing in both popularity and necessity daily. Happy to answer other questions if you have them-

CG

[garetvf]

Thanks

[dfrecore]

SpanishHour is supposed to get you ready for the CLEP: http://www.spanishhour.com/

[alab21]

Language Transfer is helpful too! It shows you all of the words you probably already know that are similar to English and the patterns.

https://www.languagetransfer.org/free-courses-1

They have a lot of other languages too, even Swahili. It looks like 9 languages. I believe it’s all still free.


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