<p>If you did well in the course (maybe a 4+), would you be considered to be fluent? Also, is it an easy transition to AP Spanish lit?</p>
<p>The only kids I know who were fluent in Spanish after AP Spanish were kids that were fluent before it - all of my friends that made it to AP Spanish really could only truly converse on an elementary level if all parties spoke very slowly.</p>
<p>No, you won’t be fluent. Not even close.</p>
<p>I’m a semester into AP Spanish and I do not speak Spanish. Not even close. I’m one of the better Spanish students in the class, but I can’t even understand spoken Spanish without a heavy American accent. High school Spanish will not make you a fluent speaker.</p>
<p>I don’t even think AP Spanish is conducive to learning to think in and speak Spanish fluently - my friend took AP Spanish as a Freshman and she used to tell me how much she struggled with it despite being born in Guatemala and being able to speak Spanish fluently. She talked about it being too nitty gritty if that makes sense.</p>
<p>Proficient maybe, not fluent.</p>
<p>My daughter is a HS sophomore and will be leaving next week for Spain, where she will spend a semester at a local school there. Her host family and teachers have been instructed not to speak English with her. The program staff told my daughter that she will be miserable for a little while, but after three or four weeks, she will understand almost everything. After three or four months, she will be dreaming in Spanish. So I hope she will be fairly fluent by the time she returns in late June or early July.</p>
<p>No you are not fluent or bilingual with a couple of years of Spanish. I’ve had students with 5’s and they cant understand a simple sentence or paragraph. It’s arrogant to assume that with a couple of years of Spanish that you are now fluent. When people tell me, “oh, I’m pretty fluent in Spanish” I then try to speak with them and they cannot understand a word or formulate an appropriate response. </p>
<p>We use a lot of colloquial and regional spanish in different parts of the US along with the cultural mores and palabras apochadas that can’t be taught in the classroom environment. Don’t pretend to be bilingual because you will be busted so fast, it won’t be pretty.</p>
<p>frowny face at the above poster whose goal is to “bust” people for not speaking Spanish well enough, haha. To the OP, if you get a 5, you’re pretty good at Spanish. It’d probably take a semester in Spain or something for you to be fully fluent, but if you get a 5 you’re well on your way.</p>
<p>Yeah no. Try, live/study abroad for 3 years and then you might be getting close. Even some Spanish teachers aren’t fluent. :/</p>
<p>This is why you take Latin like me - no one can “bust” you for not being proficient or fluent unless the Pope catches you or something.</p>
<p>If you’ve received a 4, you’re fluent enough to convince me (scored a 2) that you know Spanish really well. --There is a non-native speaker that I just can’t come up with a word he does not know in Spanish. For the interview or conversation part of the exam, he’ll be talking about current events and things about politics at a really fast pace…
It’s actually very difficult to receive a 4, “fluent” is a very strict definition–if you know enough Spanish to say what you need/want to say in most cases, that’s pretty close to fluent.</p>
<p>I would say that it depends on your environment and your effort. I took Spanish 1 & 2 with a Mexican teacher in middle school who spoke Spanish very fluently. She always made us speak the correct sounds and we had weekly speaking tests which were extremely difficult to do well on since every mispronunciation resulted in loss of points. This really helped me speak well as a Spanish student, and my current Spanish 3 teacher who likes book activities instead of living in the Spanish culture has halted my learning curve in that category. Though she also says I speak better Spanish than anyone in the class, as those students have very thick American accents. I also had many Mexican friends in my class back in middle school to whom I tried to speak to normally in Spanish and whom frequently corrected me with small mistakes I had made which eventually came back to help me. I had a solid foundation, and I put in the effort to try and understand the language rather than just putting my feet up and taking it easy. With the strong foundation I have as compared to others in my class, they struggle for B’s while I struggle for a 95+. I have a small American accent, but come AP Spanish, I will still need a wholly Spanish environment to complete my fluency.</p>
<p>It’s possible, but not necessarily. At my school AP Lang is most kids sixth year of Spanish, so most of them are pretty close to fluent. Depending on how much effort you put into actually learning the language and talking with people, you may or may not be fluent. The exam itself doesn’t really test fluency though, so simply getting a 5 doesn’t mean you’re fluent. </p>
<p>You would know best if you’re fluent. Fluent is being “able to speak or write a particular foreign language easily and accurately.” To what degree accurate is depends on who you talk to though. You most likely won’t know the slang of a particular region unless you practice with people from that region, but it really doesn’t matter. If you really know Spanish, any needed slang will be pretty easy to pick up. </p>
<p>So if you feel completely comfortable speaking Spanish, and can hold a conversation at a pretty fast pace on a large variety of topics, then feel free to call yourself bilingual. You don’t need to sound native to be fluent.</p>
<p>From these replies it’s really clear that most of you haven’t taken AP Spanish. It’s true that the exam can be prepared for without really understanding Spanish at a high level, but you still need to be able to understand long listening portions. Will you function in regions with highly specialized slang? No. They’re learning an academic Spanish. yayitsme has it best.</p>
<p>To the people saying you need 3+ years of immersion to become fluent, HA! It could, I guess, if you were determined not to talk to anyone you didn’t have to. But you can certainly become fluent in about 6 months after AP Spanish. </p>
<p>DEFINITELY NOT. The only way is to throw yourself into a spanish speaking country.</p>