AP World Language and Culture Framework Update

The College Board periodically updates AP® courses and exams to reflect new developments in their disciplines and more clearly communicate required content and skills.  

Based on feedback from the AP teacher community, the Board is revising the AP world language and culture courses and exams to focus cultural tasks on authentic sources and is transitioning to a digital exam to modernize and improve students’ test-taking experience.

Additionally, all AP world language and culture courses will be anchored in the same skills and will have very similar exam designs.  

The earliest these revisions will launch is the 2026-27 school year (May 2027 exam). These revisions will not affect the 2025-26 school year. The courses and exams that will undergo revisions include Spanish Language and Culture, French Language and Culture, Chinese Language and Culture, German Language and Culture, Italian Language and Culture, and Japanese Language and Culture.

Course Revisions

Here are the main changes:

• Course frameworks for six AP world language and culture courses will be aligned to streamline skills and learning objectives
• A new course project where students use source materials in the target language to prepare for authentic speaking tasks on exam day. For the course project, students will use source materials in the target language to prepare for authentic speaking tasks on exam day. On exam day, students will present their project and verbally answer questions about it. A project manual will be released to help teachers understand the required project components and facilitate students’ preparation for and completion of the course project. 

Exam Revisions

• The exam  will move to the Bluebook digital testing application and discontinue the paper exam. 
  Note: Wired headsets with microphones will be required. CD players, handheld digital recorders, and the Digital Audio Capture (DAC) app will no longer be used.
• Exam items will be reorganized, streamlined, and standardized to ensure a smooth digital exam-taking experience and maintain the core tasks and objectives.  
• Current speaking free-response questions (FRQs) will be replaced with authentic speaking tasks aligned to college-level courses that students will prepare for in advance and complete on exam day.  
• FRQ scoring guidelines will be streamlined.

Next spring before revisions launch, a revised course and exam description (CED) will be released and in the summer, there will be professional learning opportunities to prepare teachers, including AP Summer Institutes and the AP Annual Conference