After being relatively pleased with my English exam, my nerves were settled for yet another full day of exams. The night before saw some last minute preparation for the subjects with a focus on Maths as it’s my subject of the two and I’ve always been told that “you have to work hard to fail Irish”.
Maths paper one (OL) was our first exam of the day and when I turned over the paper I was relieved to see an easy Arithmetic question, its most taxing task was having to calculate the hours worked by a worker in a day. I think I spent more time being jealous over the amount of money he earned than I spent actually doing the question! There were surprisingly easy parts to some of the questions and nothing was really too complicated. A nice paper overall, I just hope Paper II will be as accessible.
Irish paper one (OL) was a a very nice paper. For the first time in a long time in a paper, I understood the comprehensions which always helps when you’re answering 10 questions on them each worth 4%! The essay titles were all nice and liberal, I chose to write about Saturday nights being my favourite night and my father winning the lottery. I managed to reach the recommended word count on each and although my standard of Irish is pretty bad in parts, I’m hopeful that I picked up marks worthy of a good C1 in the paper!
The aural directly followed the Irish paper (well, after a 1 hour lay about in the Sun) and it wasn’t too bad. The supervisor commented on there being a few difficult parts for Ordinary Level and I would have to agree. There was one question in particular that I was totally lost for, ‘Comhra Dó”. I was waiting to hear the title of a book for the 2nd question and suddenly realised that the conversation had moved onto the 4th question! Apart from that, I can’t really complain about it and I’m glad that I will never have to listen to that deplorable Ulster accent EVER again… unless I flick over to Ros na Rún that is!
It’s paper two tomorrow, the prose and poetry paper, which is worth a mere 17% of the overall exam. I’m not going to cry myself to sleep over my lack of preparation and will probably just look at “An Gealt” which is the most tipped of poems to be on the paper!
hello….yes i started my day on the 6th of june at 7pm wednesday…..the pressure and nerves really got to me….finally before i had known it i was in the exam hall anxiously waiting on the paper one to be handed out….got it….did the questions…..wrote quite a good essay….and was done!!
PAPER 2…CAME IN A FLASH…wrote a pretty poor macbeth Q…cultural context went fine and i nailed JOHN MONTAGUE….
I came out from the exam hall last….happy with the relitevly good start to my exams…..
TO MY HORROR………
I couldnt believe it….i was shocked , sick……
we had never once been told this in class and i hadnt really read the instructions in paper 1 much……
I HAD DONE 2 QUESTION As INSTEAD OF A QUESTION A QUESTION B…….
WHICH MEANT ID STRAIGHT AWAY LOSE 50 MARKS……
COMMENTS AND ADVICE (POSITIVE) WOULD BE HELPFUL
A surprising amount of people do that every year. While an examiner can’t mark you for both of them, they will only include the Section A that you did better in, they will however mark the rest of your paper easier. They recognise that you’ve made a mistake and will try and give you extra marks here and there to try and make up for it.
They aren’t out to nail you, they’re out to help you get as many marks as you can!
Hey thanks for that piece of optimistic and positive encouragement…..
it was the most feared situation i was in….i really hope that they do kinda feel a bit sorry for me!!
I also did something really stupid for the maths, which was that i didnt write the calculator model on my page(another thing to worry over)however i was talking to the superviser and he put a note in with the exams telling them what had happened and also put the calculator info with it…..GREAT!!
so anyway anybody doing geography or business…..any comments on the paper…??
I thought geography so so easy…anyone agree??
go and die fuckersss
it was really hard
I did my Leaving cert in 1966 and insisted that I sat the Irish (Honours paper) against the advise of the Brother however I sat looking at it for a long time regretting that I did not take the advice of the brother, however I was pleased with the result and felt vindicated that I chose to do the honours paper. Is it any harder now?
I now live and work in England as a Solicitor so believe me there is live after the Irish paper. I hope to soon renew my ability in irish through various irish speaking clubs in the area.