Students 'très heureux' with ordinary and higher French

LEAVING CERT FRENCH:THERE WERE smiles all round after the Leaving Cert French exams yesterday, as students and teachers expressed their satisfaction with well-pitched and topical papers at higher and ordinary level.

The aural section of the exam was praised for the clarity and pace of the recording.

“If a lot of French was spoken in the classroom throughout the year, that would have helped as a lot of the everyday classroom vocabulary came up,” said TUI representative Mary Costello.

Students felt they had plenty of time to answer and with topics like sport and mobile phones covered on the CD, they were on reasonably familiar ground.

At higher level, the paper drew praise for its topical and imaginative content. ASTI representative Máire Ní Chiarba said: “This was a nice, interesting paper. You can’t say an exam is ever enjoyable, but it wasn’t a paper they would have had to struggle through.”

Reading comprehensions were appealing. The first about a couple living on an abandoned island and aiming to turn it into a tourist destination was “lovely”, according to Ms Costello. “Some of the grammar was a little bit sticky, but overall it was fairly clear.”

Corinne Gavenda, French teacher at the Institute of Education, had a slight issue with the second comprehension piece, which dealt with dealt with the subject of theft.

“The vocabulary required was quite specific to stealing, which may not have been a topic that candidates had studied,” Ms Gavenda said. However, teachers agreed though that this section was doable.

Students had a variety of topics to write about in the productive writing section. The compulsory question one gave them a choice between writing about whether they thought it was possible to live without the internet or how they would feel if they had to move to another area.

“It was a good choice and it gave students an opportunity to demonstrate their skills,” Ms Costello said.

A choice between writing a diary extract about an argument or an e-mail about a music festival followed, along with opportunities to write about sport or the merits of literature, global warming or how life will be in 2019.

Ms Gavenda said: “All the topics were very relevant to their lifestyles, specifically the questions relating to the internet and sport. These topics would also have been studied by candidates for the oral exam.”

Ordinary level students were no less pleased with their exam, teachers said. Ms Costello said it was a “lovely” paper. “The first comprehension piece was about happiness, which made for a nice start”. The next extract about a rock festival dealt with familiar material and a third piece about a young adventurer’s travels in Guyana were well chosen, according to Ms Ní Chiarba.

There were no surprises in the productive writing section either. “That has remained consistent throughout the last number of years,” Ms Gavenda said.