Praise and satisfaction, plus the odd quibble, was the verdict of teachers on the Junior Cert English papers yesterday. The three levels in English - higher, ordinary and foundation - were mostly reasonable, challenging and well thought-out, they said.

A piece of writing by Jonathan Miller in paper one of the higher level was "a nice touch," said John Mac Gabhann, TUI subject representative and teacher at Tallaght Community School. "It seems a humane touch rather than desperately turgid. Its wry humour gets the adrenalin running." However, Sheila Parsons, ASTI subject representative and teacher at the Holy Faith De La Salle College, Skerries, Co Dublin, said the vocabulary in this section was difficult.

The range of topics in the next section was good because it provided an opportunity for students to "tap into their sense of the bizarre and the absurd," said Mr Mac Gabhann. Overall he felt that the paper was "rather consciously middle class."

He pointed in particular to a question in this section which featured an advertisement with a picture of a teenager's bedroom. "I'd have liked a bedroom like that in my early years," he said. "But overall it's not a bad paper. It's fairly humane."

Ms Parsons said that paper 2 in the afternoon was "quite difficult." The drama questions seemed to expect that students would have visited the theatre. "Maybe more resources should be made available so that students can attend theatre," she said.

Mr Mac Gabhann said the paper was "slightly oblique at times" and he did not like the unseen poetry. Overall, though, the paper was "difficult and challenging."

The essay choice at ordinary level, said Mr Mac Gabhann, was "reasonably good, not excessively adventurous but not bad." The next section, featuring a story about pilots taken from the Reader's Digest, was "not bad, not too technical - it's humane as well." He felt that the section on "functional writing" to be "very restrictive and limiting" and students were not given much choice. They had to write about five school rules or answer questions about favourite pop songs.

This was "based on a cultural assumption that teenagers are all completely obsessed with music and have the time to indulge that obsession," according to Mr Mac Gabhann. He was happy with the drama section which featured "a play of the moment." The section on fiction was "okay" - many would have read the book, Outsiders.

Ms Parsons said the ordinary level was "very satisfactory." Mr Mac Gabhann felt the poetry section was "fairly accessible - but I didn't like the media studies section."

Instructions on the exam paper to students that they could fold the accompanying glossy page "in three along the red dotted lines" could leave some "quite flustered," he felt. He also felt that some of the questions in this section were "too fussy and too many" and could have created undue time pressure. The foundation-level paper yesterday morning was "more difficult than in previous years," according to Ms Parsons, but she praised the use of colour pictures as "very suitable." The paper was "reasonably good," said Mr Mac Gabhann. "There were no particular problems."

The "Silly Snaps" picture used in the first question was "a very nice photo" to introduce the paper to students, he said. The reading passage was "do-able, but not easy." But, he said, the drama section was difficult, in particular for students at this level who have greater literacy problems that others. The media studies section was "fairly tough" and the poetry was "not easy."