Let's increase the pass rate:
After reading about the Spanish Praxis' 37.9% pass rate on the Pennsylvania Department of Education's website, I began to wonder why it is so low. There are many possible reasons. Foreign Language Education is going through the greatest change since I started studying Spanish in the 7th grade; both the Spanish AP Exam and the Spanish Praxis are testing students for skills that have never been tested before and they are using technology. These tests require language educators who have been doing things the same way for 15 + years to change their teaching approach and testing methods and it requires textbook companies to change too.
These important tests reflect the expectations of the new National Standards for Foreign Language. Foreign language instructors who have used methods that served their students well for decades might find that those methods are not preparing their students for the Spanish Praxis or the Spanish AP Exam because of the new objectives. Here are the pass rates for the Spanish Praxis in PA.
http://www.teacherpassrates.ed.state.pa.us/Screens/wfPassRates.aspx?PID=4490&AUN=405253104&Y=2011
Fortunately, Educational Testing Services, who deliver the Spanish Praxis, offers a Free PDF (see the link below) that explains each section of the Spanish Praxis with examples. It's important to read through this carefully and complete all the sample questions, including listening and speaking sections. Buy their test prep materials too. They are well worth the money and time.
Even with the best textbooks and a teacher who speaks Spanish, it is still not enough to prepare students for success on the Spanish Praxis. Spanish majors and minors should listen to or read at least an hour a day of authentic Spanish language materials starting in their Freshmen year of college going beyond the course requirements, which might never require you to listen to authentic Spanish. "Authentic Spanish language" materials are written or spoken Spanish media that were not designed for second language learners, but were designed for native speakers of Spanish. At first, it might seem overwhelming. Read or listen to sources in which you are able to get the gist of it. That's all that is expected during the learning process. You will become slowly more comfortable as the months go by. Trust me. I know from experience. Start with music, t.v. shows, Reader's Digest, and radio talk shows. When you reach a level of comfort with that, then move to news; newspapers, radio news, and television news are the most difficult. They really are speaking faster, just like news people do in English and there isn't a lot of repetition or visual clues. Personally, I think that serious students should be doing all of this on their own, but teachers must integrate authentic materials into their lessons regularly, both written and audio.
Why do I like Reader's Digest so much for students? Because there is always some article that will interest you and the writing is good quality and manageable. The accents are in the right places and correct spelling as well as complete sentences. They do not use Spanglish. Avoid websites and magazines that use Spanglish. It won't be on the Praxis. The other reasons that I love Reader's Digest in Spanish is that there are so few middle level reading sources in Spanish for second and foreign language learners that will interest them. It's ideal for intermediate students because the sentences and paragraphs are not too long. The style of writing is more direct than creative. It's just a really excellent source for building a strong foundation in reading and provides a vast array of useful daily vocabulary. What more could you ask for? In fact, a good textbook company would include a classroom set of Reader's Digest in Spanish magazines with an online workbook for high school Spanish II, III, and IV, increasing the difficulty of the questions for each level. This would also be a great idea for a Spanish I and II college textbook company too. And if they could get Reader's Digest to let them make an audio of some of the articles with a listening comprehension activity, that would be awesome!
Remember, the links on my blog are designed with students in mind, to make it easy for you or your teacher to find quality Spanish sources. I do not recommend chatting in Spanish because of the poor quality of the Spanish. When you are still learning, it can be confusing and cause you to develop bad habits.
I highly recommend buying audio books in Spanish. The links to two audio-book vendors are provided here on my blog and I have personally checked them out. If you buy an audio-book that is not abridged then you can buy the book and follow along with the speaker. There is so much that a college professor or an AP Spanish teacher could do with this! Your students could read an entire novel together in Spanish! In addition to written tests, you could give listening comprehension tests using the audiobook and writing your own questions.
I suggest copying my blog and posting it somewhere that is convenient for you, so you will have excellent reviewed Spanish sources available at your fingertips all the time. Here it is:
http://cs-spanishnews.blogspot.com.
Teachers: buy textbooks with high quality and interesting listening comprehension component. Remember, the fact that you speak Spanish in class is not remotely sufficient to prepare students for the Spanish Praxis. Students will be required to understand a wide variety of dialects and dialogues as well as group discussions, often with background sounds going on. No teacher singularly can provide this. Find a textbook that has already done this work and use the listening comprehension component for every single chapter. I found that students experienced the most success when I presented the listening comprehension activities after we did everything else in the chapter so they were already familiar with the new vocabulary. It's very important that students experience success in these activities or they will just give up. Consider taking the Spanish Praxis so you can experience first hand what your students will experience and this will help you to select the best textbooks to prepare for the exam.
Suggestions for Spanish majors on how to prepare for the Spanish Praxis. You have always loved learning Spanish, so run with that! Set a goal of reading at least one newspaper or magazine article / story / several pages from a book by a favorite author of yours every single day in Spanish. Listen to Spanish every single day in the form of music, telenovelas, movies, t.v., audio-books. The best listening and reading practice are the media that were not designed for second language learning, but were designed for native speakers of the language. Read for pleasure and meaning only. If you aren't enjoying it, you won't keep it up. So, pick something you would normally enjoy reading in English, but read it in Spanish. Find a Latino music artist or t.v. show that you love. Have CNN en Español feeds coming into your Facebook account and only read what really interests you. Also, read aloud at home to get your tongue and mouth comfortable speaking Spanish.
Any time you read an article on a particular theme, find a podcast on that same theme in order to reinforce the vocabulary with an auditory source. You will see the new vocabulary and hear it too. This is great! This is how you get vocabulary to land in your long term memory where you want it! It doesn't happen by memorizing long vocabulary lists. You can't possibly memorize vocabulary for the Praxis. It has to be in your long term memory. This takes years to acquire. That's why you begin in your Freshmen year as a Spanish major or minor reading and listening to Spanish daily.
Practice writing formal and informal letters. Look inside the middle section of an Oxford hard cover very large dictionary, which I am sure your teacher owns and you will find examples of formal letters in Spanish there. Remember, in a formal letter you will address the parties with "usted" or "ustedes" and you will use different salutations and closings than you would with an informal letter.
Organize a group on campus that meets to speak Spanish a couple of times a week at least. Arrange intercambios with native speakers of Spanish, a common concept in Europe, but not so in the states. Make sure their Spanish is really good. You could introduce them to your teacher to find out. For a 1/2 an hour you speak Spanish, and for the other 1/2 an hour you speak English. To get the most out of this experience, print out an article to read and discuss. This way, you push yourself beyond your usual vocabulary and you keep learning new vocabulary related to many different topics. Don't spend time translating. Look up few words. Start with Reader's Digest. Newspaper articles are very difficult, but you should keep reading them too. Mix it up.
Culture:
Know the major geographical locations (major cities and capitals, rivers, mountains) and local and countrywide socio economic issues of each Spanish speaking country, as well as key artists, musicians and writers. How to do this? A good introduction to Hispanic college textbook would probably be enough. But, go back and look at the break down of the test to determine how much time you want to spend studying culture.
Print out a map of a given country, then read one news or culture article everyday for one month on that country. When the article refers to a place mark it on the map so you have a visual of where it is. Look up any frequently mentioned places or phrases that you are not familiar with on wordreference.com, also listed as a link here on my blog. The BBC Country Profiles (a link on my blog) is a great way to get a general overview of the country in English before you take on reading articles in Spanish. It will lay a foundation that should help you. I do not recommend Yahoo because Yahoo in Spanish just seems to be a translation of English Yahoo. It does not provide country specific news and other information. This could have changed since the writing of this blog. Also, a wonderful country specific source is found under BBC Country Profiles; media. It provides a list of written and audio-visual media for a specific country. These would be even better than Google for a one month study on a particular country. Here is an example of Chile on the BBC Country Profiles; media.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-19356361
Listen to the news (radio and t.v.) from each country also, so that you become comfortable listening to regional dialects and fast paced speech. Remember, on the Spanish Praxis, you will not have any visual clues during the audio portion, so it is vital for your success that you are comfortable listening to Spanish without visual clues. It shouldn't freak you out during the test, it should be old hat. That can only be achieved from listening to Spanish daily for years of your life or having lived in a Spanish speaking country. I highly recommend study abroad for at least a year, especially for Spanish majors. If you can only go for a summer, then do not hang around Americans and try to live with a family that does not speak English or quite frankly it will be a waste of your time and money because you could end up speaking English the whole time.
Language learning theory to consider reading for teachers, principals, provosts, and students: Stephen Krashen's theories of language learning. Krashen in a nutshell; the more Spanish you read and listen to, the better you will be at writing and speaking it, which follows what we have always been told. If you want to improve your English vocabulary, read a lot! The same is true with Spanish.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acquisition-learning_hypothesis
Finally, paste my blog somewhere convenient, so you will have a ready list of excellent sources for reading and listening. Give my blog to your students to make their lives a little easier. Often, they aren't sure what are good sources. There is no reason for them to spend a lot of time running around on the Internet trying to find good sources when I have already done the work for them! :) They will surely appreciate it.
I wish you the best of luck. Immerse yourself in Spanish as much as you can beyond the classroom and enjoy it! You will have fun and you'll be prepared to pass the Spanish Praxis!
After reading about the Spanish Praxis' 37.9% pass rate on the Pennsylvania Department of Education's website, I began to wonder why it is so low. There are many possible reasons. Foreign Language Education is going through the greatest change since I started studying Spanish in the 7th grade; both the Spanish AP Exam and the Spanish Praxis are testing students for skills that have never been tested before and they are using technology. These tests require language educators who have been doing things the same way for 15 + years to change their teaching approach and testing methods and it requires textbook companies to change too.
These important tests reflect the expectations of the new National Standards for Foreign Language. Foreign language instructors who have used methods that served their students well for decades might find that those methods are not preparing their students for the Spanish Praxis or the Spanish AP Exam because of the new objectives. Here are the pass rates for the Spanish Praxis in PA.
http://www.teacherpassrates.ed.state.pa.us/Screens/wfPassRates.aspx?PID=4490&AUN=405253104&Y=2011
Fortunately, Educational Testing Services, who deliver the Spanish Praxis, offers a Free PDF (see the link below) that explains each section of the Spanish Praxis with examples. It's important to read through this carefully and complete all the sample questions, including listening and speaking sections. Buy their test prep materials too. They are well worth the money and time.
Even with the best textbooks and a teacher who speaks Spanish, it is still not enough to prepare students for success on the Spanish Praxis. Spanish majors and minors should listen to or read at least an hour a day of authentic Spanish language materials starting in their Freshmen year of college going beyond the course requirements, which might never require you to listen to authentic Spanish. "Authentic Spanish language" materials are written or spoken Spanish media that were not designed for second language learners, but were designed for native speakers of Spanish. At first, it might seem overwhelming. Read or listen to sources in which you are able to get the gist of it. That's all that is expected during the learning process. You will become slowly more comfortable as the months go by. Trust me. I know from experience. Start with music, t.v. shows, Reader's Digest, and radio talk shows. When you reach a level of comfort with that, then move to news; newspapers, radio news, and television news are the most difficult. They really are speaking faster, just like news people do in English and there isn't a lot of repetition or visual clues. Personally, I think that serious students should be doing all of this on their own, but teachers must integrate authentic materials into their lessons regularly, both written and audio.
Why do I like Reader's Digest so much for students? Because there is always some article that will interest you and the writing is good quality and manageable. The accents are in the right places and correct spelling as well as complete sentences. They do not use Spanglish. Avoid websites and magazines that use Spanglish. It won't be on the Praxis. The other reasons that I love Reader's Digest in Spanish is that there are so few middle level reading sources in Spanish for second and foreign language learners that will interest them. It's ideal for intermediate students because the sentences and paragraphs are not too long. The style of writing is more direct than creative. It's just a really excellent source for building a strong foundation in reading and provides a vast array of useful daily vocabulary. What more could you ask for? In fact, a good textbook company would include a classroom set of Reader's Digest in Spanish magazines with an online workbook for high school Spanish II, III, and IV, increasing the difficulty of the questions for each level. This would also be a great idea for a Spanish I and II college textbook company too. And if they could get Reader's Digest to let them make an audio of some of the articles with a listening comprehension activity, that would be awesome!
Remember, the links on my blog are designed with students in mind, to make it easy for you or your teacher to find quality Spanish sources. I do not recommend chatting in Spanish because of the poor quality of the Spanish. When you are still learning, it can be confusing and cause you to develop bad habits.
I highly recommend buying audio books in Spanish. The links to two audio-book vendors are provided here on my blog and I have personally checked them out. If you buy an audio-book that is not abridged then you can buy the book and follow along with the speaker. There is so much that a college professor or an AP Spanish teacher could do with this! Your students could read an entire novel together in Spanish! In addition to written tests, you could give listening comprehension tests using the audiobook and writing your own questions.
I suggest copying my blog and posting it somewhere that is convenient for you, so you will have excellent reviewed Spanish sources available at your fingertips all the time. Here it is:
http://cs-spanishnews.blogspot.com.
Teachers: buy textbooks with high quality and interesting listening comprehension component. Remember, the fact that you speak Spanish in class is not remotely sufficient to prepare students for the Spanish Praxis. Students will be required to understand a wide variety of dialects and dialogues as well as group discussions, often with background sounds going on. No teacher singularly can provide this. Find a textbook that has already done this work and use the listening comprehension component for every single chapter. I found that students experienced the most success when I presented the listening comprehension activities after we did everything else in the chapter so they were already familiar with the new vocabulary. It's very important that students experience success in these activities or they will just give up. Consider taking the Spanish Praxis so you can experience first hand what your students will experience and this will help you to select the best textbooks to prepare for the exam.
Suggestions for Spanish majors on how to prepare for the Spanish Praxis. You have always loved learning Spanish, so run with that! Set a goal of reading at least one newspaper or magazine article / story / several pages from a book by a favorite author of yours every single day in Spanish. Listen to Spanish every single day in the form of music, telenovelas, movies, t.v., audio-books. The best listening and reading practice are the media that were not designed for second language learning, but were designed for native speakers of the language. Read for pleasure and meaning only. If you aren't enjoying it, you won't keep it up. So, pick something you would normally enjoy reading in English, but read it in Spanish. Find a Latino music artist or t.v. show that you love. Have CNN en Español feeds coming into your Facebook account and only read what really interests you. Also, read aloud at home to get your tongue and mouth comfortable speaking Spanish.
Any time you read an article on a particular theme, find a podcast on that same theme in order to reinforce the vocabulary with an auditory source. You will see the new vocabulary and hear it too. This is great! This is how you get vocabulary to land in your long term memory where you want it! It doesn't happen by memorizing long vocabulary lists. You can't possibly memorize vocabulary for the Praxis. It has to be in your long term memory. This takes years to acquire. That's why you begin in your Freshmen year as a Spanish major or minor reading and listening to Spanish daily.
Practice writing formal and informal letters. Look inside the middle section of an Oxford hard cover very large dictionary, which I am sure your teacher owns and you will find examples of formal letters in Spanish there. Remember, in a formal letter you will address the parties with "usted" or "ustedes" and you will use different salutations and closings than you would with an informal letter.
Organize a group on campus that meets to speak Spanish a couple of times a week at least. Arrange intercambios with native speakers of Spanish, a common concept in Europe, but not so in the states. Make sure their Spanish is really good. You could introduce them to your teacher to find out. For a 1/2 an hour you speak Spanish, and for the other 1/2 an hour you speak English. To get the most out of this experience, print out an article to read and discuss. This way, you push yourself beyond your usual vocabulary and you keep learning new vocabulary related to many different topics. Don't spend time translating. Look up few words. Start with Reader's Digest. Newspaper articles are very difficult, but you should keep reading them too. Mix it up.
Culture:
Know the major geographical locations (major cities and capitals, rivers, mountains) and local and countrywide socio economic issues of each Spanish speaking country, as well as key artists, musicians and writers. How to do this? A good introduction to Hispanic college textbook would probably be enough. But, go back and look at the break down of the test to determine how much time you want to spend studying culture.
Print out a map of a given country, then read one news or culture article everyday for one month on that country. When the article refers to a place mark it on the map so you have a visual of where it is. Look up any frequently mentioned places or phrases that you are not familiar with on wordreference.com, also listed as a link here on my blog. The BBC Country Profiles (a link on my blog) is a great way to get a general overview of the country in English before you take on reading articles in Spanish. It will lay a foundation that should help you. I do not recommend Yahoo because Yahoo in Spanish just seems to be a translation of English Yahoo. It does not provide country specific news and other information. This could have changed since the writing of this blog. Also, a wonderful country specific source is found under BBC Country Profiles; media. It provides a list of written and audio-visual media for a specific country. These would be even better than Google for a one month study on a particular country. Here is an example of Chile on the BBC Country Profiles; media.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-19356361
Listen to the news (radio and t.v.) from each country also, so that you become comfortable listening to regional dialects and fast paced speech. Remember, on the Spanish Praxis, you will not have any visual clues during the audio portion, so it is vital for your success that you are comfortable listening to Spanish without visual clues. It shouldn't freak you out during the test, it should be old hat. That can only be achieved from listening to Spanish daily for years of your life or having lived in a Spanish speaking country. I highly recommend study abroad for at least a year, especially for Spanish majors. If you can only go for a summer, then do not hang around Americans and try to live with a family that does not speak English or quite frankly it will be a waste of your time and money because you could end up speaking English the whole time.
Language learning theory to consider reading for teachers, principals, provosts, and students: Stephen Krashen's theories of language learning. Krashen in a nutshell; the more Spanish you read and listen to, the better you will be at writing and speaking it, which follows what we have always been told. If you want to improve your English vocabulary, read a lot! The same is true with Spanish.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acquisition-learning_hypothesis
Finally, paste my blog somewhere convenient, so you will have a ready list of excellent sources for reading and listening. Give my blog to your students to make their lives a little easier. Often, they aren't sure what are good sources. There is no reason for them to spend a lot of time running around on the Internet trying to find good sources when I have already done the work for them! :) They will surely appreciate it.
I wish you the best of luck. Immerse yourself in Spanish as much as you can beyond the classroom and enjoy it! You will have fun and you'll be prepared to pass the Spanish Praxis!
