Leaving Cert German: Challenging, with little room for rote learning

Leaving Cert German students faced a nice and fair higher level paper, although some topics and questions may have caused consternation, said Patrick Kavanagh, ASTI subject representative and a German teacher at Gorey Community School.

Orla Ni Shuilleabhain, a German teacher at the Institute of Education, said there was "very little scope for rote-learned material in this exam. Students would need to have been able to respond on the spot to the written section, which is typical of the German paper. It was a challenging exam time wise, and weaker student may have found the written section quite demanding." She added the essay section left little room for pre-prepared material and students would have been required to think independently.

Kavanagh said a question about a “clothes exchange party” would have been culturally jarring, while another asking students about the most important professions of the future was a little too abstract and might be challenging enough for an English-speaker to answer, in English.

The ordinary level paper was “very nice, with nothing particularly surprising”, said Kavanagh. “The three reading comprehensions, which included stories about an unemployed young person, emigration, and gap years were well chosen. The grammar questions were fine.”

Around 7,400 students took this year’s German papers, about a quarter of the number who take French, which remains by far the most popular European language. “German is a very important language, both in business and internationally,” said Kavanagh. “Germany has one of the biggest economies in the world, but it remains somewhat under-represented in schools. There is an idea that German is for the really academic students, but this is misplaced: if they can do Spanish, they can do German. That said, students should go for the language that is of most interest to them.”