'English? You haven't a chance'

An English exam might not seem like much of a challenge for a journalist, but when your colleagues are gleefully anticipating your downfall, the pressure is on, writes SHANE HEGARTY.

LESSON ONE: as a journalist, it really isn’t wise to accept the challenge of re-sitting Leaving Cert English. It is not because the subject is hard – it is because it is expected to be easy. When you are a journalist, whose job primarily involves writing in English or some version of it, then the expectation is not just that you should pass the exam, but that you should sail through it; that you should be able to complete it in roughly half an hour; that you should get an A0, or something equally mould-breaking.

Failure, or anything even close to it, would be extremely humiliating and possibly career-threatening. As if future editors will take pause and mutter: “We could give Hegarty that Obama interview, but, well, you know, there was that whole Leaving Cert debacle . . . ” So my colleagues found the idea hilarious. Although it’s worth pointing out that the sub-editors – those who hold the real knowledge in a newspaper, who beautify reporters’ raw copy – were far more measured in their assessment. “English?” they’d say, raising an eyebrow. “You haven’t a chance.”

Lesson two: if you are going to re-sit it, then don’t take the paper that requires some prior work. Paper one would have been preferable.

That is the “read a piece and write about it” paper. The “tell us about your holidays” paper. That’s the one that involves off-the-cuff opinions based on rushed thoughts under the pressure of a tight deadline. Such a scenario is hardly alien to journalists.

Instead, I got paper two: the one that requires some actual knowledge of the classics. Or, at least, to have seen their movie versions. It was quite a shock to realise that I couldn’t simply turn up and hope for the best. I needed to understand the curriculum. There was nothing for it but to do what real students do. I sat down and read the grind notes.

Macbethwas an option as the prescribed text and, luckily, it was the play I had studied last time around in 1991; there was a broad selection of poets; and there was a list of works from which I could choose three to use in the comparative-texts section.

They included movies: Inside I'm Dancingand Strictly Ballroomare there, but I chose The Truman Showbecause I've seen it a couple of times and liked it, but also because the option of studying a film wasn't available to me two decades ago. So the weekend before the exam, I entered Xtravision with the intention of renting The Truman Showby way of brushing up. Instead, I left with Hellboy II: The Golden Army. I'd recommend it.

I also chose Philadelphia, Here I Come! because it was also on my original curriculum, and I had a half-decent memory of it. I could have chosen Waiting for Godot, but it's been some time since I saw it, and I've never actually read it, so in a two-part exam question I would have been in danger of giving an answer in which nothing happens twice.

I also selected The Life of Pibecause I read it when it came out in 2001, and had a decent recollection of its plot. Boy. Tiger. One boat. Easy. Then I read the crib notes. What's this: carnivorous trees? Japanese investigators? Were they sure? Oh dear.

The poets proved particularly difficult, because they needed to be read. I chose a selection, including Michael Longley and John Montague, whose works I had a certain familiarity with already. But as all Leaving Cert students know, the problem with reading even the most wonderful literature in this context is that it sucks every drop of fun out of reading. You read someone as skilled and affecting as Michael Longley not with any pleasure, but with a sense of trepidation, as if at any moment he might jump out from behind a pillar and ambush you with a question about what it all means. You read it to glue it to your memory, not your soul. It’s no way to learn.

So, to the exam itself. As I got towards the end of it, I began to wonder if what I considered to be a mature and questioning approach to the questions was beginning to come across as utterly supercilious.

The Macbeth question asked me to respond to the statement that “Macbeth has all the ingredients of compelling drama”, and I went through the list of ingredients but suggested that to have ticked all the boxes it would require a car chase.

To the statement, “The main characters in texts are often in conflict with the world or culture they inhabit”, I went in to a pompous “but of course they are! Why does that even need to be asked?” type of rant.

And by the final paragraph (“In conclusion . . . ”) it occurred to me that the marker would greet it as either a very valiant attempt at the paper, or as an exercise in arrogance from a smart-ass 35-year-old who thinks he knows it all. And that, either way, the next time I’m asked to do an exam, I’ll pick home economics.

How Shane did

THE MARKER SAYS

It was obvious that the paper was answered by a mature person who knows their own mind. The answers showed originality and maturity, something that is not always easy to attain from 18/19-year-old students. There was a freshness in approach and an ability to think outside the boundaries.

The answers lacked general technique, in particular the comparative study of texts. Here, the use of linking devices and the ability to draw clear points of difference and similarity between all three texts was not managed too well. The insights on the texts themselves made up for the lack of knowledge of the linking devices.

Overall, a good paper, but the answers were too short. Students are expected to write about four or five pages on the Shakespearean text and the same on the prescribed poetry.

SHANE’S RESULT

168/200 – 84%

B1