Teen Times:The recent buzz of the oral-examination fortnight has died down and teachers are "getting down to business" and "really getting focused" (erm . . . when did we get a break?). Oral-exam help books and supplementary teacher notes are disposed of, burned to the heavens, or otherwise erased from the mind. The orals are a thing of the past, are they not? Well, the injustice isn't, if you ask me.
My major qualm with the oral examination is the illogical concept of how it is approached. In every single Irish, Spanish, French, German and other language "help" book, the ever-so-friendly author offers us the comfort that "it is only a conversation". I don't know about any other Leaving Cert students, but I don't know of any conversation that I have dreaded more than that of the two oral examinations. Fair enough, it is an exam and you do have to know your tenses and correct orders of nouns and adjectives, and all the other technicalities; but do we really need 20 pages of information on how to talk about our families, pastimes, favourite music and holidays?
If it's so much of a conversation, why are there so many prepared pieces? It's not the teachers' fault, don't get me wrong. It's the absence of logic within the system. We are learning off reams of notes to show the examiner what exactly - how good we are at reading?
The orals are a performance. They are repeatedly rehearsed and students and teachers alike have to admit that. A conversation should flow, not just loll along with prepared pieces that you say with practised emotion, while expecting the next question.
That's the "format", however, and I did the exact same as thousands of others out there because that is what is expected of us, it's what gets us the marks. Sure, it's dead handy if you have one of those photographic memories that can easily learn off all that information - but for the rest of us, it's just a lot of stress and a lot of great expectations placed upon us.
It is because of these expectations that I and many of my fellow classmates have had near meltdowns these past two weeks. The words "It's only a conversation" ring bitterly in our ears as we learn off, in our chosen language: "My name is Mary. I am 17. I have one brother and a dog." We learn the words for "global warming" and "nurses' strike" and any other random topic we'd never lend our tongues to in English, but because we might be asked it, we stress ourselves some more and learn them.
The fabled "easy" exams in the Leaving Cert can never be called so, because in the end they're exactly the same as the written exams. You don't have a choice, nerves can get the better of you, and you are screwed if the examiner is in a bad mood. A little less conversation, please.
Rachel Tracey is a sixth-year student at St Wolstan's Community School, Celbridge
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