<p>If you are good at languages, you might not find it difficult, but these classes differ from school to school and the best judge of whether you could handle it is the French teacher. Perhaps he/she can let you attempt a typical French IV exam to see whether you’re on par with the students who have gone through the usual sequence in your school. If he/she knows you are interested in joining the French AP class and supports this plan, he/she might help you get up to speed. After all, you have over six months yet to prepare for that class. Plenty of time to learn if you just know what it is you need to do.</p>
<p>My daughter took three language courses her senior year–French V (AP), Latin IV (she’d taken Latin I the year before and taught herself the rest–her Latin teacher supported her in skipping from Latin I to Latin IV and gave her the materials to do so), and Russian I. They were very, very easy for her, because that’s what’s easy for her. </p>
<p>You could also check a prep book for the AP French exam out of the library and see whether it’s way over your head or not. </p>
<p>Note that the format and content are changing this coming year, so the nature of the course might change as well. I believe the listening was notoriously difficult in years past–you had to listen to news broadcasts and whatnot and talk about topics in French. My daughter’s teacher said that a 5 on the AP exam in French was considered “la bete” (devilishly hard to attain). This may change with the new format.</p>