LEAVING CERTIFICATE: ENGLISH PAPER 1 ORDINARY LEVEL:SUSAN BOYLE, runner up in last week's final of Britain's Got Talent, could have made a decent attempt at yesterday's ordinary-level English paper, as candidates were asked to discuss the advantages and disadvantages of YouTube.

The online video networking site was the first subject of yesterday’s ordinary-level English paper 1, which is taken by two out of every five Leaving Certificate students.

“This was a great question!” said one enthused student in Waterford.

“I was able to talk about Susan Boyle’s millions of YouTube hits and her meltdown and everything!”

In a continuation of the contemporary theme, students were asked to write a blog about their experience of winning a competition to be a celebrity for a day.

“This was the first time that a blog came up on an English paper so some of the students may have been caught by surprise,” said teacher Alan Thompson in Donegal.

“However, they were given the option to write a diary instead.”

“This was a very accessible paper that would have interested and engaged the candidates,” said Jim Lusby of the Institute of Education in Dublin.

“There was a nice range of texts, with a particularly enjoyable extract from Peter Sheridan’s memoir of Dublin.

“Students found that there was a good range of comforting compositions and functional writing tasks.”

There was also a comprehension passage on the arrival of television into a 1950s home.

Essay titles included an article on being a teen, an exercise in imagining the future and a short story inspired by zombies.