Dream question and a few surprises on Junior Cert Irish honours paper

In the morning, most Junior Certificate students faced into their Irish papers, although it was the first of two for higher level candidates.

Robbie Cronin, subject spokesman for the Association of Secondary Teachers Ireland, said that Paper 1 was quite positive, and essay titles about an interesting dream or a foreign holiday were probably among the favourites.

He was surprised, however, that an option to write about a film star was given instead of a sports star, as many would have been preparing for something about the soccer World Cup or Brian O’Driscoll.

He had a concern about possible confusion among students between the Irish word for funny (greannmhar) used in one title, and the word for sunny (grianmhar). He thought the same title could as easily have used the word ‘scoil’ for school instead of ‘scoilse’, which many students had difficulty with.

Otherwise, Mr Cronin considered a reading comprehension piece on the Pan Celtic Festival to be very appropriate for the age of Junior Certificate students.

He considered the afternoon paper for honours students quite a good exam, but the unseen prose was one of the hardest questions he had seen at this level for many years.

“The effort in trying to contextualise the text, by the addition of a background piece, I felt would have confused the students,” Mr Cronin said.

Although the questions on the text probably made it more accessible, he wondered why a glossary of difficult terms was not provided in the same way as it was for poetry. He said the glossary made a challenging poetry section more accessible, and the questions on it were fair.

Mr Cronin thought the two informal letter choices were student-friendly, one of them about a computer game and the other about a school visit by someone famous — where students could have picked Brian O’Driscoll.

For the ordinary-level candidates, there was just a single paper and that two-hour morning exam was considered fine by Mr Cronin.

Among the few slight concerns were confusion raised in a picture-comprehension piece, where students might have been unsure which of two images matched the advice on avoiding sunburn. Mr Cronin said some students did not understand the phrase for special needs in a comprehension piece about an airline, and that a related question was far too wordy.

He considered the reading comprehensions about actor Cillian Murphy and education activist Malala Yousafzai interesting, and the postcard, letter and story were all fine.