Improving Your Spanish Before the BTLPT or LOTE Spanish Exam

Most of my products are designed to help people that are already pretty fluent in Spanish, but need to learn pedagogy, improve their writing skills, or see a clear example of a lesson plan or another writing task.

However, some people are "rusty" on listening and reading comprehension, as well as writing and speaking proficiency.

If you are in that position, you need to immerse yourself in Spanish as much as possible!  Study Spanish textbooks if you have any.  The Barron's AP Spanish guide gets good reviews.  You should be reading in Spanish, listening to Spanish, speaking Spanish, and watching Spanish TV, videos, etc non-stop the next few weeks.  If you have any friends or family that speak Spanish, give them a call and ask them to help you practice.

Keep in mind that for the LOTE Spanish exam certain parts of the test count more than others (see page 12 of the ETS manual).  Instruction and Assessment (Pedagogy) counts the most at 34.6%, and is often the hardest part for LOTE test takers.   I offer a study guide to help you prepare for that section.  Since cultural understanding is only 8% and it's hard to prepare for, I wouldn't recommend focusing on that.  Listening comprehension and reading comprehension each count for 16.7%, so you want to devote time and effort to improving your listening and reading comprehension.  The written expression and oral expression each count for 12%, so those are also important.

For the BTLPT Spanish exam, listening comprehension counts for 21%, reading comprehension makes up 26%, oral expression counts for 29%, and written expression makes up the remaining 24%.

Be sure to carefully review the ETS preparation manual and supplemental guide for your test.

Questions?  Post them here, or email me at courtneyschonefeld@hotmail.com