Important Updates
AP French Language and Culture Updates and New Resources for 2019-20
To help more students prepare for—and succeed on—the AP French Language and Culture Exam, we’ve clarified the course’s focus starting with the 2019-20 school year and are introducing new resources for your classroom. We’ve also moved exam registration to the fall, a best practice that improves students’ chances of earning college credit and placement.
Download the new course and exam description
New AP Resources
This August, we’re introducing AP Classroom, with a suite of new resources designed in collaboration with AP educators that will help give students personalized feedback throughout the year. These include in-depth unit guides, personal progress checks and a dashboard to measure student progress, and a question bank of real AP questions.
Course Overview
AP French Language and Culture is equivalent to an intermediate level college course in French. Students cultivate their understanding of French language and culture by applying interpersonal, interpretive, and presentational modes of communication in real-life situations as they explore concepts related to family and community, personal and public identity, beauty and aesthetics, science and technology, contemporary life, and global challenges.
Your updated course and exam description (CED) for the 2019-20 school year more clearly ties course content and skill development to the six required course themes and defines how they will be assessed on the exam.
Course Content
To provide context and content for students to develop their skills in the modes of communication, AP French Language and Culture takes a thematic approach. This framework provides a clear and detailed description of the course requirements necessary for student success. The framework specifies what students must know, be able to do, and understand to qualify for college credit or placement. There are also many suggested authentic resources to support instruction throughout.
The AP French Language and Culture framework is made up of six units. As always, you have the flexibility to organize the course content as you like.
Unit |
| Unit 1: Families in Different Societies |
| Unit 2: The Influence of Language and Culture on Identity |
| Unit 3: Influences of Beauty and Art |
| Unit 4: How Science and Technology Affect Our Lives |
| Unit 5: Factors That Impact the Quality of Life |
| Unit 6: Environmental, Political, and Societal Challenges |
Course Skills
The updated AP French Language and Culture framework included in the course and exam description outlines distinct skills that students should practice throughout the year—skills that will help them learn to think and act like speakers of French.
Skill |
Description |
| 1. Comprehend Text | Comprehend written, audio, audiovisual, and visual text (text, pictures, and numbers). |
| 2. Make Connections | Make interdisciplinary and cultural connections. |
| 3. Interpret Text | Interpret the content of written or audio text (words). |
| 4. Make Meanings | Make meanings from words and expressions. |
| 5. Speak to Others | Communicate interpersonally by speaking with others. |
| 6. Write to Others | Communicate interpersonally by writing to others. |
| 7. Present Orally | Communicate through spoken presentations. |
| 8. Present in Writing | Communicate through written presentations. |
AP and Higher Education
Higher education professionals play a key role developing AP courses and exams, setting credit and placement policies, and scoring student work. The AP Higher Education site features information on recruitment and admission, advising and placement, and more.
This chart shows recommended scores for granting credit, and how much credit should be awarded, for each AP course. Your students can look up credit and placement policies for colleges and universities on the AP Credit Policy Search.
Meet the current Development Committee for AP French Language and Culture.