‘Irish is one of our easiest exams’
The vast majority at the school on the historic North Monastery school campus took the honours Irish exams, in contrast to the national trend of less than half of Junior Certificate candidates doing it.
Lauren Mackey from Ballyvolane said she didn’t mind the exam at all, given that all their classes for the last three years have been through Irish.
“Working in Irish all the time helps, although the grammar questions were hard,” she said after the two-hour morning exam.
She was confident of doing well in the second paper yesterday afternoon, although she conceded that English Paper 2 on Wednesday was quite difficult.
Like most Junior Certificate students at Gaelcholáiste Mhuire, Pádraig Ó Loingsigh also found some of the grammar in Irish Paper 1 tough.
“Other than that, it was easy,” the Gurranabraher teenager said. “The listening comprehension was fine too, but Irish is one of our easiest exams anyway.”
Denise O’Brien from Farranree also fared well but agreed with her classmates about the grammar section being tricky. But rather than being nervous about starting the exams with English, she is more apprehensive about some of the later exams.
“I’m talking about history, in particular, there’s a load to learn for it, and parts of the maths course as well,” she said.
Denise took a break for the exams from her favourite hobby of Tae Kwon Do, in which she came third in a junior European competition in Slovakia last October. “I’ve been doing it for six or seven years in the North Mon club but I gave up for the last month to study.”
The grammar section of the first higher level Irish paper was the only part that posed any problems for Kevin Foley from Glanmire.
“Everything else was okay, though, and I’m fairly confident about the second paper in the afternoon, but I’ll be even better if the Caitlín Maude poem Géibheann comes up,” he said.
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