Students are very happy with 'straightforward' papers

Junior Certificate English: With the large volume of writing involved, the English exams are never soft, but this year's Junior Cert English papers were seen as a very welcoming, even friendly, start to the exams, at all levels.

"Overall, they were an extremely well presented and very friendly set of papers," Tommy Glynn of Coláiste Cholmcille, Inverin, Co Galway, said. "None posed any particular problems and there was an imaginative use of graphics."

At higher level, both the morning and afternoon papers were "very enjoyable", he said. "The extracts were all very well-chosen and were appropriate to higher level."

In Alexandra College, Milltown, Dublin, Honor O'Connor's students also appreciated the higher-level papers. "The students were very happy - the papers were very straightforward and not at all daunting."

Those keen to give their two cents worth of advice to the Irish team got the opportunity in section 3 of the morning paper when asked to write a pep talk a captain might give to his team if they were losing at half time. "The peptalk question was very topical and very appropriate to the day that was in it," O'Connor said.

The afternoon paper, always a real test of endurance, also went down well in Alexandra College. However, O'Connor said, many students found the Shakespearean drama question confusing and instead opted to answer question on the extract from Educating Rita.

Her students "simply loved" the question on the Michael Hartnett poem, but she said many teachers felt question 2  of the poetry section was quite limiting.

Joseph Byrne, teaching in St Joseph of Cluny, Killiney, Co Dublin, found both higher-level papers "very student friendly".

The reading question on Levi's jeans in paper one was "very appropriate to the denim generation", he said. However, some students were thrown by question 2  in that section, an advertising question that would be more usually found in the media-studies section. "Something different like that can be quite a shock, but students should have been able to respond to it," he said.

His students were relieved to find "nothing to ambush them" in paper 2, Byrne said. However, in the fiction section they may have found the question asking them to assess the piece as a competition entry a little daunting. "This was a little awkward, but it was the only place that there might have been a few raised eyebrows," he said.

Ordinary-level students sat a single morning exam yesterday. The paper was well constructed and well received, said O'Connor, but the fiction question was testing and "by no means a walk home", she said. She was particularly impressed with the media-studies question on signs, which, she said, tested an important part of the students' education.

Glynn said the paper marked a good start to the exams for ordinary-level students.

Byrne also felt ordinary-level students would be pleased with their first exam. "It was very accessible, in the mode of past papers. Students are very nervous the first day, but this exam should have them quite relaxed." After all, they did deserve a break, he said. "It would have been too much to ask them to miss the match and sit a difficult paper as well."