<p>I could use the help of CC collective wisdom. </p>
<p>My sister’s school has been on a campaign to reduce its dependency from the AP program. While the cost is an issue, another one is that most classes do not “make” because the school is rather small and students can only take 2 AP a year. In addition the school does not allow students to attend other schools or local colleges during the regular school hours. </p>
<p>One of the classes that did not make is AP French. Does anyone have experience with outside programs. I have found the website for APEX, but I do not know if this is open to individual students and what the cost could be. I have checked a few colleges that offer distance programs. So far, however, I have only seen programs for first and second years of French. </p>
<p>In this case the difficulty is not to prepare for the AP (or SAT-II) exams. I’m sure that enough prep material exists. The difficulty is to find a program that could be acceptable to the HS and could be taken during the regular hours at the computer lab. </p>
<p>We used French in Action at home. It was terrific! After 4 months, my d. transferred into a community college course, and then took the placement exam at Smith and got a full year’s credit. (then she dropped French for intensive Italian.) (It helped that she was singing “Carmen”).</p>
<p>Would your school accept French in Action? It’s a series of videos. I believe it was produced by Yale in collaboration with Wellesley. It’s only good for practicing speaking French while learning about living in France (including dealing with nosy concierges if I remember correctly), not reading literature, which your sister would have to do on the side. It is possible that some colleges still use the series. </p>
<p>My D did AP French on her own (she maxxed out her school’s offerings) with the vague help of her French teacher. While she only managed 3’s (Language junior year and Lit senior year), she did get placement for two years when she got to Reed and took <em>their</em> test. The reading list for French lit is easily available–she read the books in French and in translation–and she did some traveling to improve her fluency. Oh, and she watched a lot of movies in French (without subtitles) and in English (with the French subtitles on to help her reading).</p>
<p>“You know you don’t have to take the class to take the exam? You can self-study and take the exam, anyway.”</p>
<p>Evita, thank you for the reply. One of the issues is to make sure that the classes could count as one of the mandatory seven periods and replace the regular French class. In other words, it must be a program that allows the grade to transfer into the HS system. For instance, an evening class would not. </p>
<p>i self-studied it and got a 5. just get barrons, read a couple of books and SPEAK IT. u dont really need to practice all the verbs and conjugasions cuz it makes up not even 1/5 of the test(i think). READ READ READ</p>
<p>My h.s. was very similar Xiggi. Sophomore year I maxed out the French dept offering (up to AP french language & comp) however my school required 3 years of language and since I’m from Mexico I wasn’t going to take spanish and I didn’t feel like taking latin either. So what I did was I created (with the help of my awesome ap french language teacher) a syllabus for AP French Literature that I would follow to self study (included mainly reading all the novels on the book list from the AP site, reading various poems & short stories and writing papers on them). Then I would give the papers/essays to the AP french teacher at the school who would “grade” them as she was the sponsor for my independent class. Thus I did all the work on my own (under her supervision) but I didn’t take up much of her valuable time as I read for the entire week and turned in a paper (2-3 pages) every week. So essentially she only had to spend 20-30 minutes a week on my class. The school ended up giving me credit for the class as well as AP credit for the class (+1 on GPA) plus I did well on the AP test…</p>
<p>Maybe your sister can do something similar…create her own program under the supervision of a current teacher at her school.</p>
<p>Xiggi, how about mining some college websites for syllabi and reading lists for basic French literature courses? If she brought the French teacher a projected course of study with books and a listening program, would the teacher be willing to grade her essays, as the basis for her grade in the course?</p>
<p>The French in Action videos are also very good. As a practical matter, however, students preparing for AP French language exam also need to do a good deal of interactive conversation practice and ideally that conversation practice is best done interactively and face-to-face with an instructor who is fluent in French without an accent.</p>
<p>The AP French Language has listening comprehension AND speaking components, where students must record their oral responses, as well as reading and writing components.</p>
<p>AP French literature is just based on reading and writing and it is easier to send off a batch of written practice essays for feedback than to get conversational feedback on a regular basis.</p>
<p>If your sister does want to develop conversational fluency in French, she might want to sign up for an electronic “penpal” service, in which she could find a French-speaking partner who wanted to improve his/her English. The idea is that they would use microphones and Internet voice-chat to take turns practicing conversation in one another’s languages. That way she gets a French conversation partner with native fluency and accent and her partner gets an equally fluent unaccented English conversation partner.</p>
<p>There are a number of such language-exchange services at very low cost or no cost–here’s one:</p>
<p>Homeschoolmom - thank you for those two links! My daughter’s school has only an Honors French IV class, but they can take the test if they want at the end of the year. She just mentioned to me yesterday that she needs to find some good french literature to read over the summer and school year on her own if she is going to try the AP lit test so the first link is very helpful indeed! And, that language exchange service sounds like fun - she is already in the next room looking through the site as I write this. Thank you!</p>
<p>yeah carolyn those are fantastic links i used them 2 years ago when I did my independent french lit…I had a few other ones. Let me check and I’ll get back to y’all.</p>
<p>Thank you everyone for the suggestions. I am happy to see that this thread might be helpful to other CCers. We may end up with our own CC version. </p>
<p>I googled the book recommended by Bern. Here’s a link to a website that carries the title. </p>
<p>You may use the ISBN to locate more suppliers. </p>
<p>NA6583 - Student Book Softcover, 544 pp. $54.95 ISBN:2091765813
NA5821 - Teacher’s Guide Softcover, 575 pp. $50.75 ISBN:2091765821
NA6416 - Workbook $15.50 ISBN:2091764167</p>
<p>For instance, I have ordered books from Amazon France and they are very efficient. Actually, their delivery estimates were better than the US’ ones.</p>
</p>