AP Spanish Language and Culture - Summer Work

Seorita Radtke
Sarah.radtke@chsaustin.org
Por qu tenemos que trabajar durante el verano?
You are being asked to do summer work to familiarize yourself with the expectations and format
of the AP Spanish exam while maintaining your Spanish over the summer. The work you will be
doing will keep your listening, speaking, reading and writing skills active and will encourage you
to develop good habits for improving these skills in Spanish.
General Directions: YOU MUST USE AUTHENTIC, NON-US RESOURCES TO COMPLETE
ALL WORK! (American media that has been translated is NOT authentic.) Please do
all activities completely and to the best of your ability. I will be using this work to
assess your skills upon starting the new school year. You will receive a grade for this
work. Los diarios (Part 2)(after the initial group that will be emailed to me August 20,
2015) , los articulos (Part 3), sentences with vocabulary words (not discussed in this
document) will all need to be contained in a 3-subject spiral notebook.
PARTE I: AP CENTRAL Become familiar with EVERYTHING that is published on the AP website
about this exam. The 2016 exam will be radically different from those administered in prior years
and many published materials you might find on other sites may practice skills that no longer are
tested. http://www.collegeboard.com/student/testing/ap/spanish_lang/exam.html?spanlang
PARTE 2: LOS DIARIOS: This work should be completed in a word processing program that can
be read by Microsoft Word. You must keep a diario all summer which will continue throughout
the year. Your summer work must consist of 10 journals (one per week) of at least 60 words. The
grammatical focus should be preterite/imperfect, talking about what you did. You must also
include entries that respond to the following topics: what you plan to do in the future, your hopes
and dreams for next year and beyond and your feelings on a world event of your choice. I will
be looking for the utilization of subjunctive, future/conditional, perfect tenses. There should be a
representation of all of the tenses in Spanish. In addition, I expect to see transition words and
that you pay attention to your noun/adjective as well as noun/verb agreement. Your journal (1
continuous document) will be emailed to me by August 20, 2015. Please double space your
journal. I may ask for a partial copy of your journal during the summer, so dont put it off!
PARTE 3: LOS ARTCULOS (3 subject spiral notebook) Read and do the following activities
for 5 newspaper or magazine articles (document the origin of your article). We will be continuing
this activity weekly throughout the year.
1. Cut and paste or print and paste 5 articles from a real (or printed from the internet)
newspaper or magazine in Spanish (resources are on page 3 of this document) into your new AP
Spanish spiral notebook. Read the article.
2. Write a list of 10 unfamiliar vocabulary terms found in the article and define them in English.
3. Write a summary of the article in your own words in Spanish in a well-developed
paragraph. When you write a summary please consider the following questions:
De qu o de quin se trata?
Qu pas?
Dnde ocurri?
Cundo ocurri?
Por qu es importante esta informacin? (o por qu es interesante?)

4. Highlight all the verbs in the article using a different color/mark for each
tense/mood found in the article and make a key
The following is an example:
present tense - yellow,
subjunctive - blue,
imperfect - purple,
future -pink,
preterit - green,
conditional- circle around,
present perfect - orange,
imperfect subjunctive-red box around,
past perfect black box around commands-blue box around
infinitive red circle,
You may choose to use the following websites or find some of your own. You may also use
magazines in Spanish, but dont limit yourself to fashion/sports/gossip magazines. YOU NEED
TO LEARN CURRENT EVENT VOCABULARY FOR THE AP TEST.
PARTE 4: LEER Practice grammar and vocabulary by using these reading resources from the
BBC
Mundo website. Make this website a favorite on your computer. It has a wealth of information in
Spanish that you will be using as you do your journal entries and other writing. I may also be
sending you short stories/articles to read throughout the summer.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/mundo/
PARTE 5: HABILIDAD DE ESCUCHAR
You will need to spend a minimum of 5 hours listening to authentic Spanish this summer,
preferably in 30 minute increments. You will keep a log in a word processing program that can
be read by Microsoft Word of exactly what you listen to and when you were listening to it. Title
each listening instance with the name of the program, the source (TV station, podcast, etc.) date
and time. You will need to document 5 separate instances of listening activity (In other words,
one 2 hour movie cannot count 2 hours hours towards your total. It can count for up to one hour
but then you must listen to other types of broadcasts and you must have 5 separate instances.).
For each entry of your listening log, you will write a short reflection in Spanish indicating the
content, difficulty of listening and your interest in that source. (Minimum of 3 sentences.) Your
listening journal (1 continuous document) will be emailed to me by August 20,2015.
Suggestion:
Find something that interests yousports, a soap opera, and game show. News on the radio or
TV will be the most useful in the long term. If you can find a show that you enjoy watch the series
and see if you can keep up. If you like sports, watch sports. I like novelas, so I watch telenovelas
whenever Im home alone (The spanish drives my family nuts!) Due to the limited vocabulary
used during a sporting event, you may only use a sporting match to account for hour of your
total time. Due to the on in the background nature of music and the fact that you dont
actually have to understand it to appreciate the beat, music does not meet listening criteria.
Give yourself time. It will take your ear a while to adjust. You wont understand everything, but
youre not supposed to. The goal is to understand enough to know whats going on. Do this on a
weekly basis to keep your skills fresh. If you try to cram it all in at the end, you defeat the
purpose.
PARTE 6: HABILIDAD DE HABLAR
There is no specific assignment here, but it would be in your best interest to attempt to speak
some Spanish with someone over the summer. Get into the community and meet peopleat
restaurants, churches, Latino markets. Get together with your AP language classmates every
couple of weeks for dinner or coffee just to talk in Spanish.

PARTE 7 : A CONOCERNOS

A major component of learning a world language is trusting the people around you enough to
make a mistake and not totally freak out. In order to feel that way we need to get to know each
other. You all have been in classes together forever. I, however, do not know any of you. With
this in mind you will need to provide me with an email address that you will be checking at least
once a week this summer as I will be sending you snipets of my life along with other materials
and asking for snipets of yours (todo en espaol, por supuesto), that way we can hit the ground
running and skip all the idk u nervousness next year when we get to school.
PARTE 8: EL AO QUE VIENE
Start collecting information to develop a presentation of what you did during the summer, and
what you had hoped to do, but ultimately didnt. Its much easier to begin now and think ahead
by taking pictures of fun or interesting things done during your summer break with friends or
family (please keep it school appropriate). Your diarios will be very helpful with this.
A. You will be required to make a power point with at least 10 slides with both pictures or photos
and text (in the past tenses).
B. If you start now you can practice it ahead of time in order to present a clean, fluid
presentation for the class without reading it (which you are not allowed to do!). You may check
your pronunciation with a teacher, a native speaker or a classmate.

NEWS RESOURCES:
http://www.elpais.com (news from Spain)
http://www.consumer.es (general information and human interest stories)
http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/spanish/news/ (general information)
http://www.semana.com/ (online magazine from Columbia)
http://www.mexicodesconocido.com.mx/interior/index (places in Mexico)
http://www.lanacion.com.ar/ (news from Buenos Aires, Argentina
www.cnn.com/espanol/
www.bbcmundo.com
www.nacion.com
www.elmundo.es/
www.univison.com
www.rtve.es/ree o
www.ecos-online.de/audio
www.telemundo.com

EXAMPLES FOR PART 3

Honor Code
College students are required to abide by an honor code that forbids them from cheating, lying
and stealing, both within the academic world and as members of the college community. I expect
the same commitment to honor from you, as a member of a college-level course. What this
means is that you are expected to complete all assignments on your own, without consulting
native-speakers or translation devices of any kind. Your work should represent what you
are capable of doing using as resources your mind, grammar books or notes and a dictionary. If
you are not sure about how to utilize an original source without plagiarizing, please see me and I
can give you tips. I do not expect your production of Spanish to be without error at this level.
Translation devices are prohibited at all times.
No one may EVER proof-read your work, suggest changes to your work or make changes to your
work unless I have specified these activities within the parameters of peer evaluation.
Anyone found in violation of these policies will be subjected to disciplinary action.
Just for fun: Test your language level: http://www.bbc.co.uk/languages/spanish/gauge/
Imperfect practice:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/apps/ifl/languages/spanish/news/quizengine?quiz=spnews_journey_1
Preterite practice:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/apps/ifl/languages/spanish/news/quizengine?quiz=spnews_planet_1
Ser v Estar:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/apps/ifl/languages/spanish/news/quizengine?quiz=spnews_telenovela_1
Past tenses:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/apps/ifl/languages/spanish/news/quizengine?quiz=spnews_immigration_1
Preterite v. Imperfect:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/apps/ifl/languages/spanish/news/quizengine?quiz=spnews_moncada_1
Infinitive, Indicative or Subjunctive:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/apps/ifl/languages/spanish/news/quizengine?quiz=spnews_commercecuba_1

--or
http://www.bbc.co.uk/apps/ifl/languages/spanish/news/quizengine?quiz=spnews_us_hispanic_1
Present Subjunctive:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/apps/ifl/languages/spanish/news/quizengine?quiz=spnews_latinosusa_1

AP Spanish Language
Seorita Radtke
School Year 2015-2016
_____ I have read and understand the assigned summer assignments for the AP Spanish
Language Course and I agree to complete all assignments by the first class meeting in
September.
_____ I understand the Honor Policy as described on the Summer Assignment handout and I agree
to abide by its terms for the summer assignments and during the 2013-2014 school year.
_____ It is my intent to take the AP Spanish Language and Culture Exam on Tuesday, May 6. 2014.
Your name: _______________________________________________
Your signature: ____________________________________________
Date: ____________________________________________________
Parents name: _______________________________________________
Parents signature: ____________________________________________
Date: ____________________________________________________