Good choice on French written papers

LEAVING Certificate French was examined yesterday and ASTI’s Máire Ní Chiarba said the listening exam was very clear and related questions were appropriate.

She said a written paper question asking students to write about how a friend helped them overcome a problem allowed them use their imagination and vocabulary. There was a good choice of writing on topical issues, including the World Cup slogan about the friendship in sport.

She said the ordinary-level paper should have posed no difficulties for well-prepared students, but having to use three tenses in the postcard or message may have been difficult.

Mary Costelloe of the TUI said the language in the higher-level written passages was obscure and lofty, while some vocabulary required for the written production section was very specific and detailed.

She said the ordinary-level paper was predictable and contained interesting topics such as phone use in cars, although the comprehension section was challenging.

Biology was examined in the afternoon and the ASTI’s Lily Cronin said higher-level students were surprised to be asked to draw a simple key to identify plants. Overall, she said there was a good choice, testing students’ understanding of contemporary issues.

TUI’s Tim O’Meara said the paper was quite demanding and noted some students’ choice might have been limited by the inclusion of three questions on the ecology section of the course. But, he said, prepared students should have had no major difficulties.

He said the ordinary-level paper was also demanding, with students more used to seeing line drawings of yeast than a photograph, as featured on the paper. He also questioned whether students would have practiced describing the dissection of a heart, an experiment they would have done in school.

Ms Cronin said this paper was well laid out and she welcomed the fact that topical issues such as waste management were examined.

Junior Certificate history was on the timetable yesterday afternoon. TUI’s Dermot Lucey said the higher-level paper featured a question asking for short accounts of one of three topics but two of them were not on the syllabus — Britain between the world wars and Stalin’s Russia up to 1939. He said this restricted choice and could mean the difference between grades for many students. He found a similar problem where students were asked about problems faced by Irish emigrants after the Great Famine in a different question. Otherwise, the paper was quite straightforward.

The ASTI’s Michael Stokes agreed that Britain between the wars was not a topic familiar to students, and also felt they might have difficulty explaining dominion status, although they could have avoided answering it. He said the ordinary-level paper featured interesting historical documents, giving them a good sense of events being covered and all questions appeared quite standard.

Ann Weafer of the TUI said the aural CD for Junior Certificate French was clear and the written papers were both fairly predictable in format and topical content. She said there was a lot of reading in the higher-level comprehension passages.

Ms Ní Chiarba said higher-level Junior Certificate French candidates liked the reading comprehension about a chocolate cake recipe and a further piece about eradicating litter was topical. She said the postcard and letter questions were very fair.