STUDENTS of German will have greeted a bright, sunny afternoon and the prospect of a hot weekend with relief, following generally fair exams at higher and ordinary level. The tests were clouded only by difficult cloze tests and problems with elements of the reading comprehension questions at both levels.
Carmel Kavanagh, vice president of the German Teaching Association and a teacher at Scoil Caitriona, an all Irish Dominican mixed school in Glasnevin, Dublin, said that overall the higher level paper was "fair", though students were time pressure not alleviated by a lengthy and difficult comprehension section.
The reading comprehension was "really was quite difficult" Ms Kavanagh said, though it was balanced by more accessible questions the letter and short notes section. "Question 1(a) was very difficult and it took the candidates 40 to 45 minutes to do it," Ms Kavanagh said. "It was a bit abstract and they only really have 30 minutes to spend on the question."
Students said they felt "drained" after it, and Ms Kavanagh said she was relying on the Department to be fair and to take the difficulties presented by the reading comprehension into account on the marking scheme.
Question 1(h) concerned homeless teenagers in Berlin and, again, Ms Kavanagh described the language as challenging though slang expressions contained in the piece were explained in a glossary. "The actual questions on both pieces are to be praised in that they were formulated in a clear and unambiguous way," which had not always been the case in the past, Ms Kavanagh said.
The short answers required in 1(b) compensated to some degree for the more difficult question 1(a), she added.
Ms Ann Campbell, a lecturer in Dundalk RTC and a member of the German curriculum committee of the National Council for Curriculum and Assessment, described the higher level paper as "very nice. The questions were very straightforward and there were no tricks."
Only question 1(c), the cloze test, was "quite difficult", she said. "The students have to sit dawn and think about it and for people under pressure in an exam these aren't nice. There are other ways of finding out these things which are more straightforward."
Ms Kavanagh also said that the cloze test was "considered to be difficult" by students. "The main difficulty was that in six of the blanks only one solution would be correct," she said. "It was very precise and an in depth knowledge of German grammar was required."
This is the last year of the cloze test in the Leaving Certificate in its current format, good news for next year's students but small consolation for those who bade it farewell this year. Next year there will be a more contextualised form of cloze test with more emphasis on reading comprehension.
Question 2, the letter writing section, was "nice", according to Ms Kavanagh, although the final two questions overlapped and many candidates chose to answer them in one point. "There was an opportunity here to use a good range of vocabulary and it wasn't too restrictive," she said. "Anyone who had prepared well for the oral would have found that it paid off in spades here."
Similarly, question 3, the elaboration of notes question on leisure pursuits in Ireland, would also have been comprehensively covered in preparations for the orals. Finally, question 4 required no obscure conjugations and should have presented few problems to students, and the listening comprehension was "fine".
At ordinary level, Ms Campbell described the paper as "challenging enough, to be honest. It was very fair but the vocabulary in it was challenging." Section C, the "Project Week in Elbe", was difficult in her view and, as at higher level, the cloze test was challenging.
"The letter writing test and the short notes were very fair and the questions were nice," she said. "The questions with the comprehensions were easy and straightforward if they were able to handle the vocabulary."
Ms Kavanagh said question 1(a) was fair but the three reading comprehension pieces in 1(b) were really "very difficult", particularly section B in which even the headline Stell Dir Vor Dustellst Dich vor ("Imagine that you are presenting yourself") was a play on words. The cloze test was also "quite difficult" she noted.
The letter writing question was very well received, with one teacher remarking to Ms Kavanagh that it was a particularly good use of material which would have been covered in a mixed ordinary and higher level class. The letter concerned a German pen friend asking questions in preparation for a trip to Ireland. One question concerned shop, opening times, including weekend opening, a reference to the fact that German shops close at 1 p.m. each Saturday except the first Saturday of the month, when they close at 4 p.m., Ms Kavanagh said.
She described the short notes as "difficult", as they covered a number of different forms of address, namely the plural polite, the singular polite and the familiar form of address to a friend. "They needed to be able to give very specific information and I was very challenging," Ms Kavanagh said.
In question 4(a), sections (i) and (ii) were fine but the other three were "hard enough", she said while 4(b) was a fair test.
All people were happy enough," she concluded. "There was no hysteria."
"The general feeling about the written paper was that the tasks set could be achieved during the allocated time," said Ms Gillian Doherty, a teacher in Bray Institute of Further Education, Co Wicklow.
She said students were happy with question 1(a), the reading comprehension question, but she noted that some slight confusion could have been caused by the fact that the extract from Isolde Heyne's Gewitterblumen was set in pre-unification Germany and there was no clear indication that Leipzig, the grandmother's point of departure, was in the old East of the country.
Some students found the letter writing question difficult, though the short notes were easy, Ms Doherty said. Question 4, the compositional exercises, were the most difficult for some of the students, she said, in the conjugations and relative clauses involved.
Overall, she concluded, the standard of the written paper seemed appropriate to their level, and the tasks given including sections on job interviews and cycling offences were nicely suited to the age and interests of most students.
Ms Doherty said students were generally happy with the listening comprehension, which contained no surprises. Ms Kavanagh said it was a fair test, but ordinary level students might have found it a bit fast, particularly the first section. "More and more it is reaching the speed of normal spoken German," she said, though students said they could understand what the tape was about.