Brad S Posted April 24, 2015 Share Posted April 24, 2015 DS will be in 9th grade and is currently taking French I. Although he's doing great in the class, he's not interested in continuing. He already knows a lot of Spanish, and we'd like to improve his Spanish anyway and figure we'll need some evidence of competence in a non-English language for college, so we were thinking of going with a home course in AP Spanish Language and Culture. My understanding is that the course changed around a year ago to deemphasize grammar and increase content on culture. Are there textbooks that you'd recommend? His mom and I are fluent in Spanish so we don't need a live course, but we'd need a book if we're going the AP route -- the cultural study also seems worthwhile. One book I've seen used by some online AP Spanish Language courses is Temas, published by Vista Higher Learning. Does anyone have experience with that or other recent text? Would a used text work, since DS already has spoken fluency, or are the online exercises so important that it wouldn't work? (I'd prefer a course not relying too heavily on online materials anyhow, since DS gets distracted and gets to doing other things online, but that's another story!) Thanks for any AP Spanish Language recommendations! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
EndOfOrdinary Posted April 25, 2015 Share Posted April 25, 2015 My son is no where near AP yet, but we have really liked Breaking the Barrier for many of the reasons you have listed above. We do not need a live class due to our family/community situation, we need structure and exercises he can do himself, and online is not going to work well as it is far too easy to get pulled away by lots of shiny fun other things. BtB has an iBooks version which is fully embedded and costs 15 dollars. It fits in nicely with an eclectic study. Obviously my son has not taken the AP test, so I cannot say that it is the greatest. The organization calls the Level 3 AP level/preparation. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Midway Posted April 25, 2015 Share Posted April 25, 2015 We're using Destinos. It's college-level Spanish. I bought the textbook, workbook and CDs used on amazon. We watch a video episode of Destinos on the internet for free, then go to the correlating lesson in Destinos textbook and workbook. There are audio CDs to go with the textbook and different audio CDs to go with the workbook. It's very thorough. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Brad S Posted April 25, 2015 Author Share Posted April 25, 2015 Thanks! I looked at Destinos and Breaking the Barrier. As far as I can tell, Destinos goes to about the second year in high school or second semester in college; I understand that AP Spanish Language is approx. 4th-5th year high school Spanish or roughly 4th semester in college, so I think we need something more advanced. I should have made that clearer in the OP. Please let me know if I've missed something on Destinos. Breaking the Spanish Barrier seems to go just one (high school) year below AP Spanish Language, as you said. I think we need something just past that level, especially something that's come out since the last restructuring of the AP Spanish Language and Culture curriculum to emphasize more culture. Thanks for the comments! Any others on AP Spanish? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Midway Posted June 6, 2015 Share Posted June 6, 2015 I just found this interesting resource: https://senorab1972.wordpress.com/2014/05/08/advice-to-a-first-year-ap-spanish-language-teacher/ 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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