French and history papers well received

French and history filled the timetable for Junior and Leaving Certificate students yesterday.

Teachers’ Union of Ireland (TUI) French spokeswoman Dellemar Keane said the higher-level Leaving Cert paper had no surprises and both comprehension pieces were manageable. The first was on the well-covered topic of living in the Parisian suburbs and the literary comprehension piece was very accessible, as were the related questions.

She said the written section also contained no surprises or any topics that would have thrown students.

The Association of Secondary Teachers Ireland spokeswoman Máire Ní Chiarba said student feedback on the higher-level paper was positive, particularly for asking their opinions on issues such as studying Irish or the amount of sport on TV.

She thought the ordinary-level exam comprehension pieces covered a good range of topics and the inclusion of French culture, such as the Tour de France, was a positive feature.

Ms Keane said the ordinary-level exam was very fair, with comprehension pieces on junior cyclists in the Tour de France and a French actress, and a written section that should have posed no problem for most students.

The higher-level Junior Cert French exam was deemed by Ms Ní Chiarba to have a good variety in its reading comprehensions, and she particularly liked a piece about a festival dedicated to bread, which is integral to daily French life.

She said the standard of the ordinary-level exam was very suitable for candidates at that level, and it had a particularly good variety of topics in the comprehension section.

A TUI spokesperson said the Junior Cert ordinary -level French exam was well within the capabilities of well-prepared candidates and, while there were some challenging elements to the listening test and parts of the reading comprehension questions, the written expression section was accessible to candidates.

The spokesperson thought there were no major surprises on the higher-level papers, with a few difficult pieces of vocabulary in the listening test but some nice reading comprehension texts, including an entertaining piece about a dog taking the bus on his own.

For Leaving Cert history students, the timely topic of the 1932 Eucharistic Congress appeared for both higher and ordinary level.

Tony Forrestal, a TUI history spokesman, said they were some of the nicest papers in many years, with the key personalities, concepts, and case studies examined on both.

These included questions on Parnell and O’Connell from the Irish course, Stalin and Hitler from the European history curriculum, and Mohammad Ali and Marilyn Monroe in the “US and the world” sections.

Mr Forrestal said the phrasing of the questions allowed higher-level students to show off their knowledge and his only minor complaint about the ordinary-level exam was that a picture of Gandhi, on which some questions were based, was a bit unclear.

ASTI’s Fintan O’Mahony said the exam would have been warmly received by any student who had worked well on the case studies, with old chestnuts like Parnell and cultural revival in the Ireland 1870-1914 section. He said there was a wide-ranging question on physical force in Ireland between 1912 and 1923 and, other than one about France, the choice of questions in the democracy and dictatorship section was very nice.

Dermot Lucey of the TUI said higher-level Junior Cert history students sat a nice paper with a wide-ranging but fair choice of questions.

For example, they were asked to write about consequences of the Great Famine or a revolutionary leader of their choice, while Nazi Germany, which is well covered by most students, was the subject of a number of questions in the international relations section.

He said there was good choice of short questions for ordinary-level students, and also in the people in history section where they could answer about any voyager of discovery or religious reformer.

Mr O’Mahony said both Junior Cert history exams covered most of the course, with nice pictures in the documents section for ordinary level and a tough reformation question being one of the few difficulties at higher level.