The AP French Language course is enjoyable and challenging at the same time. It is enjoyable as long as students have had a well-articulated and productive French program leading up to this course because students ultimately reap the rewards of having developed the necessary skills to communicate in French with some fluency. It is challenging because AP French Language is comparable in content and in difficulty to a course in French Composition and Conversation at the third-year college level. I have always looked at my AP course as the culmination of students’ efforts in acquiring the French language and as their reward for consistent and enthusiastic engagement in their French studies. Taking the AP Exam should be viewed as bonus rather than a chore.

I have taught AP since 1985 and, in my experience, students have had the most success in their AP course work and on the AP Exam when entering the course after four years of French. This allowed me to review and fine-tune all that they had learned throughout their years of studying French. It was then less a matter of covering a lot of material than a matter of building confidence and ease of expression during that final AP year. This would also allow me to deepen students’ understanding of many types of authentic written texts, especially literary texts. One of my strategies in teaching French levels 1 through AP was to introduce French literature in the early stages of learning with short poems by Prévert, progressing to La Fontaine’s fables and extracts of Pagnol’s novels in the middle years, ending with excerpts or entire works featured on the required reading list for AP French Literature. The reading activities were accompanied and reinforced with brainstorming, discussions, skits, selected listening, targeted grammar activities, vocabulary building activities.

Over the years, like many of my colleagues, I have often given the opportunity to fourth year students to take the AP course. Students who start their French studies in the 9th grade will finish the French program in French 4 or AP. Since this is often a combined level driven by the lower number of students in each one of these levels, I teach the class with the same material but differentiated assignments, expectations and scoring rubrics. I therefore encourage students who have good motivation and skills to work at the AP level. This approach has yielded very good results. I consider a score of 3 for students taking the AP examination in their fourth year a great accomplishment. This approach does require considerable use of differentiation techniques, especially with regard to grammar and vocabulary. I have found that peer teaching in the classroom and tutoring from French Honor Society students during lunch are immensely useful. 

Although I expose students to the format of the AP French Language Exam, I feel that my real goal is to make students confident and competent in all four skills assessed on the exam. Students must routinely interact in French (orally and in writing), as well as read and discuss a wide variety of texts in French. In addition, students should practice with portions of past AP Exams so that they are not intimidated or confused by the specific tasks required on the exam. This is especially true of the speaking part, which requires students to answer concrete, personal and abstract questions based on pictures. Students should have practiced the language process as well as the technology involved in recording their responses.

The above-described agenda may sound overwhelming, but it must be remembered that this is the culmination of four to five years of careful preparation and building of language skills. Attending an AP Summer Institute or a few one-day AP workshops sponsored by the College Board is a tremendous help for teachers preparing to design instruction for the AP course as it allows interactions with an experienced consultant as well as other AP teachers.