Time for some tough love. I have seen so many teachers miss passing by a dozen points or less and feel like they just got SO CLOSE.
Sometimes, they even sign up again to retest right away, hoping that the questions on this attempt will be easier or the grading will be more lenient and they’ll break that magic 240.
But here’s the problem with that mindset – it ignores the reality that if you fail this test, you MUST improve your Spanish in order to pass it.
I feel like I should say that one more time. If you fail the test, your Spanish has to get better before you can pass it. I’ve never heard anyone say, “Well, I took the test once and failed it, but I took it again 30 days later and passed!” I’m not saying that has never happened, but it isn’t where I’d put my money.
The BTLPT requires a high level of Spanish mastery at an advanced, academic, professional, formal register with a high degree of mastery.
Unless you are already giving graduate-level classes on bilingual pedagogy and conference keynote speeches in Spanish, you are like most of us and need to put in some work to get there.
The good news is that once you realize you need to get better at Spanish, you can get to the real work of doing it! Start listening, reading, speaking, writing, and learning as if you were working toward a Masters’s degree in Spanish linguistics.
Listen to the professional speech and imitate it. Read scientific articles and textbooks and summarize them. Speak professionally to friends, colleagues, parents, or even your microphone.
Write scholarly articles, lesson plans, formal proposals, and professional letters. There is work to be done. You can totally do it.
But the first step is this crucial realization – I must improve my Spanish language skills in order to pass.
