SpanishHour.com Practice Test Score vs. Actual CLEP test scores

[meeksterisu]

Just took the test today and got a 55. I had zero Spanish experience before October, but spent 5 weeks in Guatemala at an immersion school, came back and worked with Rosetta Stone everyday for about a month and used SpanishHour and Petersen's practice tests. I would also listen to a few Spanish podcasts as well.

I was regularly scoring 80-85% on the Petersen and SpanishHour tests and found the actual exam to be much more difficult. I thought the audio portion would have been worse if I had not brought in my own headphones, but besides the poor audio quality, the question difficulty was similar. I tried writing down notes for the longer sections but would find that I would miss important things while I was writing.

I thought the written section in the Petersen and SpanishHour tests were way easier than the actual exam. The practice tests would have you pull passages word-for-word from the longer texts while the actual exam would ask a general question about what the text meant or what the author was trying to say, never anything word-for-word straight from the text. That messed me up a bit.

In the end I only needed a 50 to qualify for the Peace Corps so I'm happy, but I was sweating it out right before I hit the submit key for the final time. Good luck on your exam!