This first of two articles is a background article. The second, from Brigitte, the real focus of this new thread, will appear later this week. First, I want us to try to come to some kind of agreement about some of the points I raise below. A full appreciation of what Brigitte is asking the group about her own situation in the second article here requires that we first have a clear and hopefully to the point discussion about the AP exams.
I begin the discussion with statements that are my own opinions and thoughts about the AP exam and TPRS/CI instruction:
In my opinion, the AP exam is very destructive in the amount of pressure it exerts on students and teachers alike. It creates unnecessary drama and its pedagogical base grows in the acrid soil of approval seeking. Before the advent of TPRS/CI based instruction, it was reserved for a very small percentage of students, the so-called four percenters, very few of whom got scores above 3, and most of whom failed with grades of 1 and 2. I know of one AP Spanish class with 22 students in it taught in the traditional way. Every single one of those students failed the exam, and typical scores were 0 and 1.
People who ask language teachers – traditional and TPRS/CI teachers both – to produce high scores on the AP Exam do not know what they are asking. They haven’t a clue of what is involved in this most difficult of all AP exams, with a few possible exceptions. If they knew what they were asking they wouldn’t ask it. Teachers who agree to train kids for the language AP exams are making a mistake, unless they are being paid a significant amount of extra money for their efforts.
Only with the advent of TPRS/CI instruction have we started to see consistent passing grades on the AP exams, with third year students of average ability frequently passing with 3’s, and the higher calibre students getting 4’s (level 3), as long as they have been trained with comprehensible input from the beginning levels, and as long as the TL has been used 90% of the time and the exclusive emphasis has been on input in the form of reading and listening for the first two years.
I had one CI trained student nine years ago, now graduated from Stanford with a PhD in Nanotechnology and a true genius, who got a 4 after only two years of French with no prior background. That student would have almost certainly gotten a 3 on the exam without comprehension based instruction after four years of traditional high school study, had he been taught in the old way, where the language is rarely used in the classroom. That last statement is based on 24 years of traditional AP teaching, before I heard about TPRS.
The numbers we have in the TPRS community about the scores that CI trained kids earn on the AP exam are not written down anywhere. They are what we have heard at conferences over the past fifteen years or so. The struggle to get hard numbers on what our CI trained kids can do continues, and it’s all heresay, but accurate heresay, to my knowledge. Please clarify any of these statements in the comment fields below.
When, in traditional classes, only four percent of students earn a 3 and the vast majority fail the exam, we have a problem in our schools, but not one that anyone seems to want to admit exists. A score of 3 on the AP Exam pretty much aligns (as I understand it and please correct me if I am wrong) with the upper end of the Novice High range/lower range of the Intermediate Low range on the ACTFL Proficiency scale. A 4 on the exam would indicate a higher range Intermediate Low rating. A 5 (at least Intermediate Mid) is an unheard of score unless the student had prior background or was a flat out genius.
Comments are welcome. When we have come to at least some minimal level of consensus on the accuracy of the statements made above, I will publish Brigitte’s article, which has me a bit rattled.