AP® Spanish Language Syllabus
MONTGOMERY COUNTY HIGH SCHOOL
Teacher: Diana Cline
Diana.Cline@montgomery.kyschools.us
859-497-8765
Credit: 1
Grades: 12 Prerequisite: Spanish 1, Spanish 2, and Spanish3
Course Overview
The AP® Spanish Language course is taught completely in Spanish. I will encourage
students throughout the year to practice Spanish consistently with myself and their peers.
The AP Spanish Language course is taught with the goal of providing each student with
an experience that is the same as a third semester college or university Spanish class.
The first quarter of the course will focus on some rigorous aspects of Spanish grammar.
The remainder of the course will place an emphasis on the four language skills through
the use of authentic materials. Students will spend time in class reading, listening and
writing about authentic materials. They will have several opportunities to practice
speaking in the target language with their fellow peers and the instructor. Students
should be able to use the Spanish Language to:
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Comprehend lectures, conversations, newspapers, letters, oral instructions and
presentations, Internet articles, and short stories.
Express themselves verbally by persuading, disagreeing, questioning, and
describing.
Communicate well in many different styles, using diverse approaches for diverse
audiences.
Course Objectives
Add to the students understanding of the more complicated and demanding grammar
concepts.
Increase the student’s speaking abilities by providing them with several opportunities to
practice in class through “real-life” recordings.
Increase the student’s reading comprehension skills by providing them with opportunities
to read authentic newspaper articles, interviews, passages from books, and internet
sources.
Increase the student’s writing comprehension skills by providing them with opportunities
to write informal and formal essays, short narratives, picture sequence stories, and short
stories.
Increase the student’s listening abilities by providing them with opportunities to dissect a
series of authentic audio selections which will contain narrations, dialogues and
informational radio programs.
Allow students the opportunities to express their ideas precisely and fluently in Spanish.
Increase the student’s ability to disseminate the AP test design.
Course Materials
To teach the AP Spanish Language course, our school will be using Triangulo (Wayside
Publishing) and Una Vez Mas (Prentice Hall) as core materials. Triangulo ensures the
student practices all four language skills. The book is divided into Informal Speaking,
reading, listening, and writing. It goes into depth in all four language skills and provides
the students with detailed opportunities to practice in Spanish and master the four skills.
Una Vez Mas is a detailed review of the grammatical structure in the Spanish language.
It is a great resource for the grammar review that will take place at the beginning of the
course.
Along with the two books that will be needed for core materials we will be using AP
Spanish: Preparation for the Language Examination (Prentice Hall). This book addresses
the most recent changes that have occurred in the AP Spanish Language exam. It
incorporates a wide variety of authentic sources in each section and is a great tool to
better prepare students for the AP Language Exam. It is divided into four sections: Unit
1, Listening Comprehension, Unit 2, Reading Comprehension, Unit 3, Writing, and Unit
4, Speaking.
Other resources will include and may not be limited too: song lyrics, internet sources,
authentic newspapers, authentic magazines, transcripts from interviews, and selected
books.
Sample Classroom Activities
Listening Skills
 I pick an audio source related to the theme of the day (Day of the Dead, Festival,
Holy Week, Holidays, Celebrations, etc).
 To start out the listening comprehension activities I will allow students the
opportunity to listen to the prompt several times while taking as many notes as
possible. They will also have a script with each listening prompt but only at the
beginning of the year. As the year progresses the audio prompt will only be
played once and text will not be provided.
 The goal is to take notes and listen for words they know. They should outline the
information they heard and provide several details about the prompt.
Sources for authentic listening activities:
 Live and archived radio from Spain.www.tve.es
 Live and archived radio from Spain.www.cadenaser.com
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www.elcastellano.org/radios.html
Links to radio and television stations www.comfm.com
BBC, www.bbcmundo.com
CNN es español, www.cnn.com/espanol/
Batanga Radio
Las voces de las mujeres, http://larc.sdsu.edu/voces/
Reading Skills
Most of the development of the reading skills will come from reading authentic materials
and discussing and dissecting in detail the material. Students will read selected poems
and excerpts from certain books in order to expand their reading skills. They will engage
in synthesis activities where they will read, summarize, and share aloud what they gained
from the reading to their peers and instructor.
Sources for authentic materials (not including the textbooks):
Clarin (Argentina)
La Nacion (Costa Rica)
Pagina 12 (Argentina)
La Voz del Interior (Argentina)
El Pais (España)
Diarios Latinoamericanos
Diarios y Revistas argentinos
CNN en español
CNN Expansion
BBC en español
LANIC
Periodicos
Thepaperboy
Prensa Escrita
El Mundo
Writing Skills
Students writing skills will be developed in pair with their reading skills and listening
skills. While reading authentic materials or listening to real world audio prompts they
will list a few main points for each source in Spanish. The next step will be to paraphrase
in writing the details of each main point. Once they have proof-read what they have
written they are ready to share these ideas orally with their peers and instructor. Students
will be asked to write a total of six major essays based on a selected reading or listening
prompt.
Students will also be required to keep a weekly journal of one paragraph in length per
day. They will be provided with “a daily topic” everyday and they will be asked to write
about this topic in a timed environment. They will be asked to share their paragraphs
with peers orally at the end of each class. Peers are to provide input on what they could
do to make the writing better. Writing will be a significant part of the student’s grade.
Student’s will be asked to write informal and formal essays, short narratives, short stories
and timed writing regularly in class.
Speaking Skills
In order to develop the speaking skills of each student, they will be presented with the
opportunity to speak in Spanish in a variety of settings. Every Friday the class will have
an informal discussion of “La Charla del Fin de Semana”, where each student tells their
plans for the weekend in a round table discussion. These charlas can become great
opportunities for interesting discussions among students and could develop into several
different opportunities for practicing Spanish orally. Speaking opportunities will be
presented regularly in several informal and formal settings. Some of the activities may
include but will not be limited to:
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Formal Power Point Presentations
Debates
“Charlas”-Small group led discussions related to readings from core text and
authentic materials
Small group presentations
Speeches
AP practice tests
Simulated phone conversations
Commercials
Skits/Dialogues
Picture sequence stories