Irish satisfactory, but English proves tough for students
WE TALK TO GRAMMAR AND URSULINE JUNIOR STUDENTS
THE Junior Certificate Irish exam got a thumbs up in general from students at Sligo Grammar School.
“It was good, easy enough,” said Imogen Wray ( 15) to The Sligo Champion as she left the exam hall last Thursday.
“We had a choice of writing about an incident or a debate so I chose the incident. It was an essay on an accident. I wrote about getting hit by a car and breaking my leg,” she said.
14- year- old Eva Craig thought the Irish paper was “actually really good” and was very happy with it.
“I was surprised when what I studied actually came up - an incident that happened in a city, in Dublin in this case, which was really handy for me,” she said.
There were also two comprehensions which were about food. “I knew all the words and the language was simple to understand so I was pretty happy,” she added.
Joseph Asare ( 15) thought Irish was easy enough and was also happy with what he had done.
“We had to do a letter and a blog. They were both fairly OK. The blog was harder than the letter. We had to write about a girl who fell asleep babysitting her brother.
Daragh Creaven did ordinary level Irish and was happy enough with it: “I struggled a bit on some comprehensions but answered most of them. Fairly satisfied with it. I didn’t know everything but that’s always the case I suppose.”
Fionn Walsh ( 15) thought the Irish exam was better than the mocks. “The incident was good, in Dublin so I was able to write about that. I thought the comprehensions weren’t too bad, easy enough to understand.
English the day before “wasn’t too bad” despite neither of his novels coming up. “I was a bit surprised by that. We spent a long time preparing for the novels. We did The Outsiders and Of Mice and Men and neither of them came up. Other stuff came up on Romeo and Juliet I was able to write about,” said Fionn.
In the Ursuline College, Irish Paper 1 didn’t do much to perturb students, but English was still weighing heavy on their minds.
Ellen Bastible told The Sligo Champion: “I thought Irish was fine. The second comprehension was a bit weird but it was ok. The verbs were ok as well,” she said.
“The paper was pretty much as we had planned for,” said Sorcha Reddy.
Some students, though, find the aural or the listening section tough. “The aural was hard,” added Aine Keaney. Her fellow student, Daeneara McGowan felt the same: “The listening was hard. The last two pages were tough but the first
was OK. It wasn’t what people were expecting, I don’t think.”
The English exam on the opening day of the Junior Cert was still being discussed on Thursday afternoon.
“It went better than I thought but there wasn’t enough time to finish it and read over it properly,” said Laura Gordon.
“No novels came up or film studies and we spent three years on those so what was the point really?”
Sorcha Reddy also felt the time constraints made it all the more difficult: “The question on apostrophes was a bit weird. We only had two hours to do the whole paper and there was a lot in it,” she said.
“We needed at least an extra 15 minutes,” said Caoimhe Buckley. “It was too long and I didn’t get time to read over it at the end to make sure it was ok,” she said.