YESTERDAY'S ordinary level Irish paper II provoked some students to tears but others went home happy as the revised syllabus was examined for the first time. Reaction from teachers was also mixed.
"I've broken my heart trying to enthuse them about Irish ... then they come out after the exam saying they hate the language." One young Irish teacher rang Exam Times to say that her ordinarylevel Leaving Cert students were very upset after paper II.
It did not adequately reflect the sample papers, she said. The quotations used in the pros dualgais question were only one sentence long and many of her students did not recognise them. The vocabulary used in the pros roghnach was also inappropriate, she added. Exam Times also received calls from a number of parents with distraught sons and daughters who found the ordinary level paper very difficult.
But, Ms Maire Ni Laoire, ASTI subject representative and a teacher in Scoil Mu ire gan Smal, Blarney, Co Cork, said that the ordinary level paper was in line with sample papers. Her pupils had no complaints about the prescribed prose while a wide range of themes was available in the unprescribed prose. Most pupils should have found something to suit them, she said.
At higher level, there was general satisfaction. Ms Ni Laoire said that the paper was in line with sample papers. Although there were occasional difficult sections in the prescribed prose, there was a wide choice of questions to choose from. There was a lack of clarity in the layout of section 2A(b) and the questions were quite technical hut manageable. The novel section was fine and the autobiography section was especially nice, she said. She said that the appearance of three women poets was a pleasant surprise. "Overall, it was a long paper but students who had worked hard had nothing to fear," said Ms Ni Laoire.