Junior Cycle Spanish: Teachers criticise absence of marks allocation scheme

The first-ever junior cycle common level Spanish paper was very approachable for students, but they may struggle with the senior cycle course due to a large gap in difficulty between the two courses, a Spanish teacher has said.

David McArdle, the ASTI subject representative for Spanish and a teacher at De La Salle Secondary School in Dundalk, Co Louth, was also critical of the lack of information over the allocation of marks per question.

This, he said, meant that students could only gauge how much they should write due to the space provided on the paper, and needed to be addressed in future years.

Mr McArdle joins a chorus of teachers across multiple junior cycle subjects who have criticised the lack of marking schemes on most of this year’s junior cycle exam papers.

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[ Examwatch 2022: Reaction to the Junior Cycle and Leaving Cert exams ]

Other teachers have hit out at the lack of choice on the papers at a time when schools were closed during Covid and many students had limited access to broadband.

In the case of Spanish, however, Mr McArdle said that choice was less necessary as the subject is not divided by topics and chapters and students would generally need a good grasp of the grammar and vocabulary.

“The exam itself included one more comprehension than was expected,” Mr McArdle said.

“They included references to Spanish culture, a story about a wheelchair basketball player who competed at the Paralympic Games, and a question on the Seville bike scheme.

“There was also a question on the human body, where the students’ vocabulary will have come in handy.”

Mr McArdle said the listening comprehension was straightforward and the audio was clear, but a question on a robbery may have thrown students who might, in the past, have sat the ordinary level paper.

“My concern is that many students, who may have got 40-50 per cent in previous years, will pick up 60 per cent or more in this paper, and think they are ready for Leaving Cert Spanish. But they may struggle as the gap between this paper and the Leaving Cert course is quite big,” he said.

Try this one at home:

Junior Cycle Spanish, common level

You are staying with the Garcia family in Valencia while doing a Spanish language course. Write an email to your friend in SPANISH, giving answers to the following: (a) Describe la familia García. (b) ¿Qué hay en Valencia? (c) ¿Cómo es la comida española? (d) ¿Cómo es el curso de español? (e) ¿Qué haces después de las clases?