AP Tests (Continued)

I suppose I should continue with my discussion from last week relating to my Advanced Placement tests. So I will. Two Thursdays ago, like I mentioned, was the day of the German language examination. After this test, my next two, final, AP tests were the ones for both macroeconomics and microeconomics given on the 12th.

But anyway, about that German test. All in all, there was barely anything that I liked about it. I don’t think I did too poorly, but, compared to the released exams spanning the last 15 years that we took for practice, the test we got this year seemed to have less interesting and engaging of listening and reading passages. The listening portion of the test seemed to go okay; there was one of the longer dialogs that I’m not sure I completely understood, but, other than that, I think I put the best answers down for all the questions. The reading part of the test, though, was completely different. None of the five passages we had to read and answer questions about seemed to be ridiculously easy, as was the case with some of those that appeared on, oh, let’s say, the 2002 test. In fact, we even had this highly complex, highly difficult passage discussing Poseidon – yes, The Odyssey’s Poseidon. I don’t know if the text was taken directly from the German translation of The Odyssey or not, but, in any case, it was just as hard to read in a timed setting as the English version of the poem. I’m glad I knew that Poseidon was a Greek god, though, as not everybody in the room did. At least I had that going for me.

After the 50-minute reading portion, followed of course by a short break, we had the writing and speaking part of the test. The 20 question fill-in-the-blank reading selection wasn’t too bad, though I already know I missed two of the questions, since, after looking at the passage for another time on the College Board’s website yesterday, I realized forgot to umlaut the a in both gefährlich and fährst. Oh well, there’s nothing I can do about it now – I just wish I would have remembered how to spell on the test.

Then, we went onto the composition section of the test. This section is usually my favorite. For whatever reason, writing a cogent paper in German complete with the advanced grammar needed to get a 9 seems to come naturally for me. This year wasn’t so good, however, since I absolutely disliked our question, which, to paraphrase as best I can, asked whether we were for or against school uniforms. We were supposed to develop our argument with appropriate evidence, and reminiscent of the AP English Language test, discuss the validity of arguments that go against what we feel. Maybe it’s because I honestly don’t care one way or another about school uniforms, but, whatever the case, I had a hard time coming up with things to talk about for this deceptively easy question. I think I wrote one of my shortest essays of the year, but, in any case, it was over the minimum amount of words, and I did find a way to incorporate writing in the passive voice with helping verbs a couple of times as well as a writing in the subjunctive voice.

The speaking part of the test was next. This went all right, even though it got off to a slow start because I had to go through two cassette recorders before finding one that would actually function correctly.

In total, I’m predicting I got a 4 on the German test, which wouldn’t disappoint me at all. I just wish I would have taken the test in 2002, however, since we took that one as a practice and I easily ended up with a 5. Oh well, each year’s test is different.

And then, last Thursday, I took the last two AP tests that I will probably ever take. Macroeconomics, the first of the two tests, seemed to go okay. There weren’t too many multiple choice questions that I didn’t quite understand, and I’m pretty sure I did really well on the free-response questions; they seemed pretty easy, even though I wasn’t exactly expecting to see a question involving a Phillips Curve.

The microeconomics exam then followed in the afternoon. I thought the multiple choice questions were harder than the ones in the macroeconomics test, but this could have just been because I had the microeconomics class in the fall, meaning the material wasn’t as fresh in my mind. The free-response questions also seemed a little bit harder than the ones for macro, but I don’t really think I did too badly on them. Hopefully I’ll get at least a 4 on this test too.