CLEP Spanish; How to study?

[lila657]

Hi everyone,

I'm new to the world of CLEP...I never knew about it until I already took the classes that they offer. My husband and I are in our last year of college and there is a requirement for foriegn language but it'll cost $3200 for us both to take the classes since they are 4 credits each class.

We both took spanish throughout middle and high school - but we graduated 8/9 years ago. We live in S. Fla so we have been exposed to Spanish and still remember a decent amount but there is stuff that of course we forgot. We remember most of the basic grammar rules and things...

Anyway - does anyone with experience with the Spanish clep think it's possible for a non-native speaker to prepare and pass it to get credit for both (need a 62)? And any advice on how to study? It's intimidating and I don't know where to start...I have the REA book but it seems somewhat confusing (how the lessons are laid out).

[Carnation]

Some options:
SpanishHour.com - through Facebook they offer this website for FREE currently.
https://www.spanishhour.com/signup.php
Supposedly working on it one hour a day for 50 days is supposed to cover 2 years of college Spanish.

Another option is to check with your local library to see if they offer an online Spanish program for free through their resources.
You may have to ask.

I would recommend you watch your favorite movies at night but change the language and captions to practice listening and reading.

YouTube is FREE has various offerings depending on what you need to learn so you can search there.

LiveMocha is FREE and many people speak well of that site.

Some homeschoolers I know started with a book they liked such as The Hobbit in Spanish.
They took a Spanish/English dictionary and slowly worked their way through the book.
It didn't help with the speaking or listening aspect, but for anyone with auditory processing issues, learning to read and write first helps to master foreign languages.

That's all my thoughts on this matter for the time being.

[Snickerdoodle]

Try duolingo.com. It's free, and I personally found that it was a good system.

[cookderosa]

Also, remember you won't have to speak - only listen and read.

This is a full online (free) curriculum I found a while back. No experience with it, but since you're checking out all options, I'd love to hear if you end up using it and if it works/doesn't work for you.
FSI Language Courses - Home

[loops77]

I've been researching this as well OP, since I want to earn those 12 credits. I have a friend that loaned me their Pimisular Ultimate Spanish program- requires 1/2 an hour a day for 90 days, but I'm sure you can double up. A good chunk of the test is hearing different voice prompts and a lot of test takers said it was hard to understand. Petersons offers practice tests that are supposedly very similar to the real thing. From browsing the CLEP forums, here are some good books for grammar and such:


Schaum's Outline of Spanish Grammar

Practice Makes Perfect Spanish Verb Tenses

Spanish the Easy Way

Classic Spanish Stories and Plays : The Great Works of Spanish Literature for Intermediate Students

Also, here is a blog of a recent test taker that shares all of the low down on the test: http://livingwatersspanish.weebly.com/bl...-test.html

[clep3705]

Tal vez usted podría empezar por pedir ayuda en español? Habla, aprender, escuchar. ¡Buena suerte!

[Reservist]

Just to reply to the thread I took the clep, scored a 61 just below the 12 credit cutoff. My experience is as follows, high school Spanish 2 years (all was forgotten), then I lived in Puerto Rico for five years, tried many Spanish language programs including pimsleur, and a couple others. All of which I considered boring and worthless. Then I tried Rosetta Stone, it absolutely blows every other program out of the water, I combined that with a workbook entitled "Total Spanish grammar", and made every attempt to practice my Spanish with the locals. End result is I'm very confidently conversational, and can speak and think in Spanish fluently, I hesitate to say I'm totally "fluent" because I can still get caught missing something or saying something incorrectly or asking someone to explain something to me in a different way.

That being said I took the exam 1 year after leaving Puerto Rico, without any other preparation and found it very difficult. It's all listening exercises. So they will tell you a long drawn out story in Spanish and then ask you questions about minute details of the story, I found myself realizing I had to take notes on the stories just to remember the details, for example the month that Maria left for vacation was June. Also the accent I was unfamiliar with, so it made listening to the passages very tedious for me.

Just my experience, I think it would be difficult to pass on high school level Spanish alone.

Also regarding watching movies in Spanish, you've got to check out "Intacto" it's on Netflix, and an awesome thriller if you don't mind violence.

[sanantone]

Interesting because I found Rosetta Stone to be completely boring (and confusing if you have no prior exposure to the language) and switched to Pimsleur.

[cookderosa]

Just to reply to the thread I took the clep, scored a 61 just below the 12 credit cutoff. My experience is as follows, high school Spanish 2 years (all was forgotten), then I lived in Puerto Rico for five years, tried many Spanish language programs including pimsleur, and a couple others. All of which I considered boring and worthless. Then I tried Rosetta Stone, it absolutely blows every other program out of the water, I combined that with a workbook entitled "Total Spanish grammar", and made every attempt to practice my Spanish with the locals. End result is I'm very confidently conversational, and can speak and think in Spanish fluently, I hesitate to say I'm totally "fluent" because I can still get caught missing something or saying something incorrectly or asking someone to explain something to me in a different way.

That being said I took the exam 1 year after leaving Puerto Rico, without any other preparation and found it very difficult. It's all listening exercises. So they will tell you a long drawn out story in Spanish and then ask you questions about minute details of the story, I found myself realizing I had to take notes on the stories just to remember the details, for example the month that Maria left for vacation was June. Also the accent I was unfamiliar with, so it made listening to the passages very tedious for me.

Just my experience, I think it would be difficult to pass on high school level Spanish alone.

Also regarding watching movies in Spanish, you've got to check out "Intacto" it's on Netflix, and an awesome thriller if you don't mind violence.

I second Rosetta Stone. We are using them in our homeschool. My 12 year old has been doing the French level 1 for grades 6 and 7 (1 lesson per school day 3x/week) and we are in no hurry- he goes back from time to time, but it's so intuitive.