The Leaving Cert Spanish paper was “accessible” and had “something for everyone”, teachers have said.
Daire Kelly, Spanish teacher at Ardgillan Community College in Balbriggan, Co Dublin, said there was “nothing too abstract” in a higher-level paper that featured themes “relevant to young people”.
Kelly said each section presented tricky parts, but there “wasn’t one question that would’ve left anyone stumped”.
Maria Fenton, Spanish teacher at the Institute of Education, said the paper was “accessible” and would have allowed students “of all levels” to access the texts and topics.
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Fenton said: “The majority of the questions will be very approachable to students of all levels.”
She said “little nuances throughout the exam” would have challenged top students “to adapt to keep fully on task”.
Both teachers said finding synonyms in the section A reading comprehension would have been tricky for students, but Kelly said if they practised using the past papers, they would have been fine.
Students were “fortunate” this year with a section B opinion piece that was “open to interpretation”, Kelly said.
Fenton said the comprehension and opinion pieces may have presented questions on the text that were “more idiomatic than might be comfortable for weaker students”.
She said students would have taken a “sigh of relief” seeing topics such as exercise and mental health appear in section C that were “mainly in the present tense”.
For the final question, in which students are tasked with writing a diary entry, Kelly said: “You wouldn’t have got a nicer diary entry on a past paper.”
Fenton said, overall, students “should feel pleased with this fair paper”.
“Every candidate was given the opportunity to put their best foot forward,” Kelly said.
[ ‘I haven’t cried yet, which is a win’: Leaving Cert diarists on the exams so farOpens in new window ]
“It gave them lots of choice while also having enough nuance to help the top performers distinguish themselves, without discouraging weaker students,” Fenton said.
The aural exam after the written paper is “always reported by the candidates as being the hardest part”, Kelly said.
He said “having to adapt on the spot” is the nature of a listening exam, which was “really fair” overall.
The ordinary-level paper was “exactly what students expected it to look like”, Kelly said, and there was “no reason” why they would not be pleased with what it featured.
Overall, he said, there was nothing that would have caused him to raise an eyebrow. The reading comprehensions were “generally fine”, as was the diary entry.
“It just looked like every other ordinary paper,” he said.
