Leaving Cert Irish paper contained ‘no major surprises’

Higher- and ordinary-level students faced little or no problems with Leaving Cert Irish paper one, but some of the essay titles were “like something from primary school 60 years ago”.

That’s the verdict from Oisín Mac Eoin, Irish teacher and deputy principal at St Benildus College, a boys’ secondary school in south Dublin.

Mr Mac Eoin said the higher-level paper was very fair and contained no major surprises.

The paper has come to be seen as one of the least stressful, with candidates given two hours to write just one 500-600 word essay, which teachers say is an unnecessary amount of time.

John Gavin of LeavingCertIrish.com said that it was a very fair and balanced paper one.

He said it touched on key areas of the syllabus and gave students a good choice of essay topics.

Reaction to the aural exam, which accounts for 10 per cent of the overall marks, was generally positive but yet again students bemoaned the amount of Donegal dialect on the tape.

“There is always an overreaction to this on Twitter,” said Mr Gavin.

Essay choices

This year, the higher-level essay choices included Irish country life, emigration and a widely predicted essay about 1916.

“Many people were predicting that it was too obvious a title,” said Mr Gavin.

“The vast majority of students had prepared extensively for this exact topic in advance of the oral exam, so they got rewarded on the double.”

Irish would ideally be divided into two different subjects, with one focusing on language skills and one on literature, Mr Mac Eoin said.

He believes this could boost people’s Irish language skills, but accepted that this might leave less of a challenge for native speakers and particularly strong students who are sitting the exam.

The ordinary-level paper was equally unremarkable, with students asked to write about a day out on the train with a friend or a school tour they went on.

Clare Grealy, an Irish teacher at the Institute of Education in Dublin, said it was a very nice paper with a wide variety of subjects .

She said the story about a train journey had a direct and student-friendly overlap with a picture sequence that they would have prepared for their oral exam.

She said the titles in the essay section, including “My Favourite Hobby” and “The Mobile”, were nice and versatile.

However, Mr Mac Eoin said the titles were somewhat childish.

Try this at home: Leaving Cert Irish, higher-level paper one

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