AP Italian 2027 exam preparation – In-person sessions in San Diego

In-person AP Italian exam preparation in San Diego: 30 hours across 9 Saturdays, January to May 2027, at 4550 Kearny Villa Rd Suite 202. $1,200. Enroll by: October 31, 2026

The AP Italian Language and Culture exam is on Monday, May 3, 2027, and it is not the same exam students sat last year. The College Board has redesigned the AP world language exams for the 2026-2027 school year. Our preparation program is built around that redesign, and it meets in person.

Why in-person preparation matters for this exam

Online preparation is convenient. For this particular exam, in person is more effective, and the redesign has widened that gap.

• Speaking is now 35% of the score, and it is live. The exam opens with a 3-minute spoken presentation, then four unscripted questions with 40 seconds to answer each. That is a performance under pressure. Students rehearse it standing in front of a teacher and a real audience of peers, and get corrected on pronunciation, hesitation, and register in the moment, not through a screen a beat later.
• The exam demands stamina. Roughly two and a half hours of sustained concentration, with no pausing. Our 3 and 4-hour Saturday blocks build that endurance. Short weekly sessions, however frequent, never do.
• Full simulations need one uninterrupted sitting. A complete timed practice exam, properly proctored, is only practical in a room. Students do several of them here, under conditions that match the real thing.
• Exam day is itself an in-person, supervised, on-screen event. The 2027 exam is digital, taken in the Bluebook app, in a room, under a proctor. Practising in a classroom on a computer replicates that more closely than practising alone at home.
• Feedback is immediate and individual. Essays and project drafts are corrected side by side, with the student, while the reasoning is still fresh.
• The group is the resource. Students hear each other’s presentations, field each other’s questions, and learn from mistakes that are not their own. The project Q&A in particular needs a live, slightly unpredictable audience.

Who should enroll

This class is targeted at students that have studied Italian at least for 3 years and can sustain simple conversations, or students that already speak Italian.

What changes in the 2027 exam

• The exam is taken fully digitally in the Bluebook app.
• A new Personalized Project Reference (PPR) is submitted through the AP Digital Portfolio before exam day. The project topic is released in January 2027, and the PPR must be submitted as final by April 30, 2027.
• The first two speaking tasks are built on that project: a 3-minute presentation (20% of the score), then four pre-recorded questions with 40 seconds to answer each (15%).
• The free-response section now comes first (65 to 70 minutes, including a 55-minute argumentative essay), followed by 55 listening and reading multiple-choice questions (80 minutes).

Our sessions run from January through May precisely so that students begin the project the moment the topic is released, and rehearse the presentation and the spontaneous Q&A well before the April 30 deadline.

What we will cover

We work with authentic materials, real Italian content created for native speakers (news articles, podcasts, interviews, ads, short videos). This builds the skills the AP exam measures: understanding real-world language and responding appropriately.

• Listening: practice with native audio and video to improve comprehension.
• Reading: work with current articles and texts to enhance understanding.
• Writing: assignments to develop the argumentative essay and free-response skills.
• Speaking: activities to improve conversational Italian and oral presentation.
• Project: guidance on research, the Personalized Project Reference, the presentation, and the unscripted Q&A that follows it.
• Digital format: practice with the Bluebook interface, so exam day holds no surprises.
• Full simulations: complete timed exams with individual feedback.

Instructor

This preparation is led by our School Director, Maura D’Andrea. Maura holds a Master’s degree in Education from Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore (Milan) and a postgraduate specialization in “Didactics and Promotion of Italian Language and Culture to Foreigners” from Università Ca’ Foscari Venezia.

In 2026, 100% of her AP Italian students scored a 4 or a 5, and two thirds earned the top score of 5, against a national average of 19% scoring a 5. Read the full results.

Schedule

30 hours of instruction across 9 Saturdays. Sessions start at 3 hours and move to 4 hours in the final stretch before the exam. These are the proposed dates:

• January 23 & 30 — 3-hour sessions
• February 6 & 20 — 3-hour sessions
• March 6 & 20 — 3-hour sessions
• April 10 & 24 — 4-hour sessions
• May 1 — 4-hour session

Both the dates and the start times are decided together with the enrolled students. AP candidates are usually juggling other AP courses, sports, and college applications, so once the group is formed we go through the calendar together and adapt the schedule and the hours of each session around their commitments. The nine sessions and the 30 total hours stay the same; when each session falls, and at what time it starts, is agreed with the class.

The exam is on Monday, May 3, 2027 (Session 2, starting at 12:00 PM local time), so the final session falls two days before it, and the two April sessions bracket the April 30 project deadline. Dates are confirmed on the official College Board AP exam calendar and the 2027 AP exam dates for coordinators.

Location

• Italian School of San Diego — see our location page
• Address: 4550 Kearny Villa Rd Suite 202

Textbook

A textbook purchase will be required for this course. The title and details will be communicated once enrollment is completed.

Cost and enrollment

The cost of this program is $1,200 for 30 hours of instruction, which works out to $40 per hour in a small in-person group. A monthly payment plan is available, please specify your preference in the pre-enrollment form.

Enrollment is open until October 31, 2026. This is the same deadline to enroll for AP Italian 2027 through the San Diego Unified School District.

For students already enrolled in Italian for Italian Speakers 7–8 or Italian as a New Language 7–8, there is no additional cost to participate in the AP Italian preparation sessions.

In the “Program” question, select “AP Italian preparation class (for students outside our Italian 7-8 programs)”.

After you submit the pre-enrollment form, we’ll email you an invoice to submit payment and confirm your enrollment.

If you would prefer one-on-one work instead of, or alongside, these group sessions, we also offer private AP Italian preparation.