The landscape of AP® World Language and Culture courses and exams is evolving, and with it comes a powerful new opportunity for student engagement: Starting with the 2026-2027 school year, students will embark on a dynamic AP® Course Project—a hands-on, inquiry-based exploration of a real-world student-centered topic. Here’s all you need to know!
Felicidades, Félicitations, Congratulations! You’ve led your students through another outstanding year—and they’ve stepped up to the challenge of their AP® exams. Thanks to your dedication and hard work, they were prepared to finish this final year of the current exam in the traditional paper-and-pencil format with confidence. Now, let’s look ahead: planning for 2026–2027.
Why the Course Project?
The rationale behind this new dimension to our course is to provide students with a platform to engage with course content in a way that is personally meaningful. It encourages critical thinking through inquiry-based learning and allows students to apply their language skills for a practical purpose.
Moreover, the project is directly tied to the two new free-response (FRQ) speaking tasks on the AP® exam:
- FRQ 1 (Project Presentation): A 3-minute oral presentation based on the student’s research.
- FRQ 2 (Project Q&A): A follow-up recorded question-and-answer session consisting of four questions related to their research and cultural findings. Each question is asked twice, and students have 40 seconds to respond.
The Project Manual: A Fifteen-Day Roadmap to Success
To support teachers in guiding students to successfully complete the project and prepare for the exam in May, the College Board has provided teachers with a Project Manual, which is essentially a detailed lesson plan, included as the Appendix to your 2026 AP® Course and Exam Description (CED). If you haven’t downloaded your 2026 CED yet, you can access it at the bottom of this AP® Central page, where all six AP® World Languages and Cultures CEDs are linked.
The Course Project is structured into four distinct phases, totaling the equivalent of fifteen 45-minute class periods:
- Phase 1: Explore and Understand (5 Days): Students investigate the prompt and interpret the provided source materials (6–8 sources), activating prior knowledge and producing an Initial Written Reflection.
- Phase 2: Investigate and Apply (4 Days): This phase focuses on deeper, student-led inquiry. Students create a research action plan, select a specific target language, country, region, or community, and identify at least three cultural factors to explore from a list of six, organized according to products, practices, and perspectives. One factor must refer to a cultural perspective. They gather information, process it, and decide what will support the project prompt within the three or more factors that they have chosen.
- Phase 3: Create and Evaluate (3 Days): Students begin planning for FRQ 1. They organize their research, integrate cultural relationships focusing on showing the relationship between products and practices to perspectives, and engage in practice presentations with feedback provided by peers.
- Phase 4: Reflect and Grow (3 Days): Preparation shifts to FRQ 2. Students learn to anticipate follow-up questions, participate in role-plays, and refine their ability to communicate about their research, also responding to questions centering on cultural products, practices and perspectives.
New Dimensional FRQ Scoring Guidelines
The two tasks described above, along with FRQ 3—the argumentative essay—will be assessed using the new dimensional (analytical) scoring guidelines provided in your Course and Exam Descriptions (CEDs). These comprehensive, multi-page scoring guidelines offer clear, detailed criteria and minimize subjectivity, making the evaluation process more transparent and consistent. I believe that teachers will appreciate this change in scoring methods. Below are screenshots from the AP® Spanish Language and Culture 2026 CED Project Manual Appendix, illustrating examples of how each Reporting Category is organized on a single page and gives guidance for scoring.
FRQ 1 Project Presentation:
FRQ 2 Project Q & A:
Why I See This as a Positive Shift
Throughout my years as a teacher, department chair, endorsed College Board AP® consultant, reader/table leader, and author, I’ve seen that students thrive when they have voice and ownership. The new course project does exactly that.
Instead of responding to unknown prompts under pressure, students will enter the exam prepared to discuss research they have conducted. They will make connections. They will analyze -perspectives. They will defend ideas. In other words, students will speak about something they know deeply and have explored thoughtfully. That is authentic communication. That’s not just exam preparation—that’s college readiness.
Building Routines All Year Long
While teachers will receive official project prompts and materials in January each year via AP® Digital Portfolio, the key to success lies in a scaffolded approach that begins on day one. You don’t have to wait until January to start preparing your students. You can build this experience throughout the year through consistent routines:
- Frequent Cultural Presentations: Regularly ask students to give two- to three-minute cultural presentations, in which students focus on the relationships between cultural products and practices with perspectives. They should also continue to compare cultures, which is still present in the revised exam. This is an expectation. See the following screenshot from the Project Q&A scoring guideline, category B:
- Targeted Vocabulary: Build a repertoire of words and phrases that support oral presentation skills, such as those used for introducing topics, sequencing through transitions, quoting data, providing elaboration, and concluding. Check your appendices in Temas and Thèmes for great support.
- Sentence Stems: Provide sentence starters to help students express data, facts, opinions, analysis, recommendations, and the like.
- Peer Q&A: Make it a standard routine for peers to ask follow-up questions after any oral presentation to simulate the FRQ 2 (Project Q & A) experience.
- Self-Reflection: Require students to reflect on their own performance using the official scoring guidelines, also a great tool for peer evaluation.
By implementing these strategies and utilizing aligned resources, we can move from worry to confidence, ensuring our students are ready to “dive into the course project with gusto” when January arrives.
Partnering for the Future
To support AP® French and Spanish teachers through the course and exam changes, Vista is providing a suite of updated resources. New AP® French and Spanish Language and Culture Exam Preparation worktexts, ready this summer for the 2026-2027 school year will mirror the new exam format. For Course Project preparation, they will include effective strategies, as well as scaffolded “mini” and “medium” projects to build readiness for the full Course Project. They will also include two complete course projects and one more on the full AP® practice exam included in the worktext. Additionally, updated editions of Temas and Thèmes are slated for Fall 2027, fully aligned with the revised course curricular requirements.
Early in this blog, I referred to the Vista AP® webinar series and provided a link to my third webinar, focused on the Course Project. In case you missed the first two webinars, here are the titles, including links:
Unpacking AP® Course and Exam Changes: Let’s Go Forward Confidently!
Planning for Continued AP® Success: Best Practices, Strategies, and Resources
I wish everyone a very smooth end to the school year and a very happy summer. Maybe I will see some of you in my AP® Summer Institutes, at Vista’s AP® Transition Summer Seminar in Fort Lauderdale in late June, at the AATSP Annual Conference in Orlando, or at the AP® Annual Conference in Las Vegas. Perhaps you have plans to attend the AP® Reading.
Whatever your plans, I hope you’ll carve out plenty of time to truly unplug, recharge, and savor summer with family and friends. You’ve more than earned it!
By Parthena Draggett
Also read:
AP® World Languages and Cultures: Planning and Alignment for 2026-2027
Building Forward as AP® World Language and Culture Educators
AP® World Language Course and Exam Changes on the Horizon
