Why do we assume that just because some governing body in our profession like the College Board has the best interests of students and teacher at heart?
In fact, they don’t. They have their profit line at heart. Indeed, when God invented these beautiful languages, He didn’t divide them into levels – “beginning” to “advanced”. There are no measurable levels in a language – that is why those who understand the research see no need for a “curriculum” to teach it (like the AP “curriculum”), since the curriculum is the language.
Get enough CI and you can be said to have mastered the language. No tricks, no subtlety, no need to measure anything. Indeed, we don’t measure the ability of adults to speak their native language. Why do we need to measure everything?
In my mind, our CI students are relative beginners all the way through the four years they spend in our programs, the few that complete them, bc at that point they have completed 500 hours (more like 250 of real input if they are lucky) and as the research tells us that they need 10,000 hours to become truly advanced (not based on memorization for a test but authentic acquisition).
So in a four year program we get about 1/40th of the time we need to prepare our students for authentic mastery. So a level 2 kid is at best more like a toddler than an infant, and an AP student, still lacking 39/40ths of requisite input hours for mastery, is more like a child .
And those are the smart and usually white students who are good at test taking. What about the rest of the kids? If a WL department in any high school is aiming for a high pass rate on the exam, they will “cull” and develop the good test takers, leaving the “others” (the not good test takers) out of the game.
For ppl to call level 4 AP language classes “advanced” is a farce, especially in terms of their ability to output the language later in the form of speaking and writing.
And a worse farce, the worst farce, is that language teachers get nervous about it, working at breakneck speed to do what they can’t according to the research actually do, always fearing that they might fail and lose the approval of their superiors if their kids don’t get a 3 on the exam, which is really very easy to do with kids who have been groomed to be good test takers since elementary school.
I know this, since I taught AP French for 24 years before finding my way out of the Approval-Seeking Forest, which is right next to the factory where they produce those bumper stickers that say “My child is an honor student at (such and such) a school”.
Yup, the test-taking culture in our schools has taken a huge toll on most kids, even the ones who succeed in getting the coveted 3, bc it makes them think that if you just study hard for the test you’ll succeed at life, which is definitely not the case. When is that going to end? Kids in high school language programs simply cannot reach true “advanced” (sic) proficiency levels if we are to believe the research, so why is everyone gassing so much about it? Are AP scores really anything more than academic “bling”?
Memorization fills the gap/brings the 3, and when a kid gets a 3 on the (recently dumbed down exam) and the College Board pronounces that as a “pass”, then in my opinion everyone is just lying to themselves, the College Board to make money and the students and teachers to say that “this and such a % of our students has “passed” the AP exam and aren’t we therefore great? It’s not a great program until ALL STUDENTS make it to level 4 or 5.
The AP language exam and everything connected to it historically and currently is a big FARCE.
Now, I love a good fight. If anyone wants to disagree with me, please do so. I may be wrong. But don’t just say I’m wrong – defend your position.