Vanessa Lee (12) and Zui Santos (12) sit next to each other in AP French, trying to absorb all of the information that they have forgotten about in the last two years. AP French was not offered last year, so this is the first chance they have had to take the course. Half of the class are seniors, like Lee and Santos, who haven’t taken the class since their second term of sophomore year. The other half of the class consists of juniors, who haven’t had the class for a year, with the last Honors 7-8 class being available Spring semester of 2023. They have only four months to review two years of learning as they prepare for the AP test in May.
Lee told herself that she was going to review during her junior year and the beginning of her senior year. Ultimately, however, she didn’t start reviewing until a few weeks before the second term. At that time, Lee was able to get help from her grandmother, a former high school French teacher.
“I remember during the first term, I kept being like, ‘oh, I’ll sit down this weekend, I’ll finally start and I’ll look over my old notes,’ and I kept pushing it back until a few weeks before the class started,” Lee said.”That’s when I realized, I have to actually review it so when I get into class I don’t completely blank. I started doing review and my grandma actually helped me a lot.”
Santos said that in the months prior to the class, Clevenger sent emails to remind them to prepare for the course.
“A month or two before this semester started, she had already started sending us emails in French to be like, ‘Hey, just a reminder, we’re not going to have time to review everything we went through those past two years, so, you have to review on your own,’” Santos said. “ It’s not that I didn’t review, but I didn’t really know where to start. And then when I got into the class, I still was having a lot of trouble, especially with understanding, because she spoke really fast. I feel like there wasn’t much more I could do to prepare.”
Even with the high stress that comes with an AP class, Lee said that Clevenger makes the class a lot more feasible.
“She has a great way of teaching, she tends to speak mostly in French, which makes sense, and sometimes she speaks fast and it can be difficult to understand,” Lee said. “But a lot of her teaching comes with visual cues. So, when she’s moving her hands around her, she’s demonstrating things. It makes it a lot easier to understand.”
According to Santos, students are struggling with basic concepts such as pronouns and negating because of the large hiatus from being in a French class. For Santos, going to Wolverine Time when she is confused about the content has helped her catch up.
“I go to her classroom all the time,” Santos said. “I will get a really bad grade because I didn’t understand what I was doing. So, I would just go to her and she would explain it step-by-step in English too.”
Although the extra work Santos has done to prepare at school has helped, she says AP French is more independent than previous levels. She still needs to prepare outside of class for the AP test,
“The teacher already taught us everything we need to know so it’s up to us to review what she’s taught us,” Santos said.
But even with her extra effort, she still has trouble with her hearing comprehension.
“It’s still really hard for me because there’s only so much material she can give us to try and help,” Santos said. “I feel like a lot of it is just me putting in my effort. I tried listening to a lot of French songs, but the more I listen to them, I kind of just memorize them and I feel like I’m not learning that much.”
Lee trusts Clevenger’s teaching and knows that if she stays on top of her work and keeps being productive, she will be able to do well on the exam.
“I have faith in what she puts us through and what she teaches,” Lee said. “She has a really good success rate with the exam, and it’s coming up close, but we’re doing a lot of work in the class. I feel like I need to continue to not procrastinate in the class to be productive and study on my own time.”
