AP Chinese Language and Culture

 

The AP Chinese Language and Culture course and exam are an important step in a commitment by the College Board to further multiculturalism and multilingualism in secondary school education.

 

“Through the world language programs, the College Board hopes to make a significant contribution to secondary school curricula,” College Board President
Gaston Caperton said. “World events make it ever more obvious that a broad knowledge and understanding of other languages and cultures is essential for our young people.”

 

The AP Chinese Language and Culture course is designed to be comparable to fourth semester (or the equivalent) college/university courses in Mandarin Chinese. These college courses, which deepen students’ immersion into the language and culture of the Chinese-speaking world, typically represent the point at which students complete approximately 250 hours of college-level classroom instruction. Course work provides students with opportunities to perform Intermediate- to Advanced-level tasks, and students are expected to achieve proficiencies throughout, and sometimes beyond, the Intermediate range, as described in the American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages (ACTFL) Proficiency Guidelines.

 

The AP course prepares students to demonstrate their level of Chinese proficiency across the three communicative modes (Interpersonal, Interpretive, and
Presentational) and the five goal areas (Communication, Cultures, Connections, Comparisons, and Communities) as outlined in the Standards for Foreign Language Learning in the 21st Century. Its aim is to provide students with ongoing and varied opportunities to further develop their proficiencies across the full range of language skills within a cultural frame of reference reflective of the richness of Chinese language and culture. AP Chinese Language and Culture teachers plan and implement a course that focuses on language proficiency while interweaving level- and ageappropriate cultural content throughout the course and providing for frequent formative assessment of students’ developing proficiencies within the context of their learning. Instructional materials and activities are carefully and strategically adapted from authentic sources to support the linguistic and cultural goals of the course.