Validating the AP® German Language Exam through a Curricular Survey of Third-Year College Language Courses

Abstract

The College Board, with the help of ETS, undertakes a curriculum survey for each subject that is part of the Advanced Placement Program approximately every five years.1 These surveys are undertaken to ensure that AP courses and exams are comparable to college-level coursework. In the case of the Modern World Languages, the college level targeted is higher than that of introductorylevel courses. For French, German, and Spanish, third-year (advanced) language courses at the college level are the target. In 2003, the College Board decided to query college-level instructors for all of the Modern World Languages then offered by AP (French, German, and Spanish) in a joint survey conducted at the same time in all three disciplines. Historically, separate surveys had been conducted in each of the disciplines in different years; however, due to overlap in basic methodologies and other aspects of the courses, it was decided that a joint survey would be conducted. It was assumed from the start that some questions would be of more concern to those in certain languages than in others (e.g., probably only French teachers would be interested in knowing if college-level instructors explicitly taught phonetics); so it was initially decided that the survey would have some basic common questions and then branch off into questions of particular concern to each language. In the end, however, the decision was made to have only common questions, in order to be able to make comparisons across languages and gather data to support differences that in the past may have been based only on assumption.