Irish Essay..

Taffy89

Hey..Just wondering how people are dealing with the irish (H) aiste/alt etc. Are people just learning off a few and hoping God is nice or are some people lucky and more than capable of writing something on the spot..

If there are people like me ie. a hopeless honours student whos onle hope is to learn a few off..any ideas what important topics to cover
I was thinking
Fadhbanna Soisealta
Tioga Ceilteach
Slad ar na Boithre.....

JC 2K3

Surely you've done essays throughout 5th and 6th year. What sort of marks did you get in them?

Remember only 20 marks are for the content, so your points don't really have to be good, just don't make grammatical errors and use the odd seanfhocal and you'll get a decent mark.

Diamond007

I have the most useless irish teacher ever! We havent finished the novel, or done ANY comprehensions or essays.. Luckily im getting grindes and my mother has a lot of irish, but there are only 8 students out of 120 in my year doing honours irish... Surely this reflects on the teacher!

Corruptedmorals

Same in a lot of schools though, in mine it's 15 out of 96..

Taffy89

yes we have a pretty useless teacher too who has it in for for some reason whick i nor the class can understand! anywork I hand up is wrong or else if its anybit good its not my work!
Yes my essays were terrible in 5th they've gotten better though,just I'll have to learn them off by heart.theres no way I could do any decent irish essay on the day! In my pre I got 20 out of 20 for content and 31 out of 80 for the irish! Which was quite annoying because I had 3 pages written compared to my friend who had nearly a page and she got 48!
Its silly gramatical mistakes I tend to make so I think I might only write a little over 2 pages with the idea the less I write the less mistakes I make!

JC 2K3

31/80 for Irish? Ouch....

You need to seriously study grammar. If you got 20/20 for your content if your Irish was perfect you would have got 100%...

Steve01

My teacher's advising us to do 2 of the 100 mark options, including the scéal we all should have learned off by now. It can be made relevant to any title so long as we tweak it a bit. And since I'll probably have that done in about half an hour, why not do a second option? There'll be plenty of time left over when the reading comprehensions are finished. So my plan is to do the díospóireacht/ oráid as well.

GretchenWieners

I'm mainly going to study vocab and shove it all in. Much prefer to have good solid Irish rather than half learning a lot of essays.

JC 2K3

Steve01 wrote:

My teacher's advising us to do 2 of the 100 mark options, including the scéal we all should have learned off by now. It can be made relevant to any title so long as we tweak it a bit. And since I'll probably have that done in about half an hour, why not do a second option? There'll be plenty of time left over when the reading comprehensions are finished. So my plan is to do the díospóireacht/ oráid as well.

That sounds like exam suicide IMO....

Why not spend 20 minutes on a plan for a really good composition and then write one very good one?

The last thing you want is to be writing under stress, which could easily happen if you try and squash writing two compositions into the time period.

Better one good one than two rushed ones.

Haven't a Clue

Four topics: Cursaí slainte, básanna ar na mboithre, coras oideachas and and brú ar na daoine oige san lá atá inniu ann. I reckon one of them's bound to come up so I learn specific vocab for these four topics.

Steve01

JC 2K3 wrote:

That sounds like exam suicide IMO....

Why not spend 20 minutes on a plan for a really good composition and then write one very good one?

The last thing you want is to be writing under stress, which could easily happen if you try and squash writing two compositions into the time period.

Better one good one than two rushed ones.

The scéal will be anything but rushed. The only reason I'd even consider doing two is because they both have their merits and their disadvantages.

The scéal has perfect Irish which is bound to pull in the vast majority of the marks (so my Irish teacher informs me, him being involved in the correcting himself) even if it has been mostly learned off. That being said most people in my class are too lazy to even attempt to learn it.

As far as the díospoireacht goes, I'm showing off my ideas but also my less-than-brilliant standard of Irish. The latter would bring my marks down significantly, regardless of how long I spend planning it. I'm not overly worried about the diospoireacht tbh, its more of a back-up if the case of extra time than anything else. And there WILL be extra time. So why not attempt another question? Rather than leave the exam hall early (which I'd probably be given out to for doing :rolleyes: )

JC 2K3

Learning off an essay vs. learning Irish Grammar rules.....

I'd go with the latter.

I don't see how you can learn a scéal incorporating all possible topics though. For example "Díoltas" could come up or "Cineáltas" could come up, two totally different subjects.....

euwwy deuwwy

I have very little prepared for the irish essay. I'm thinking of learning off vocab for Daoine oga, an ghaeilge mar teanga and Ceannaireacht in easnamh sa tir seo. (The last one covers loadsa different topics, thats why I picked it.) I havent really got the time to do more. Feel free to correct me if you think this is a bad plan but take it into consideration that I'm restricted by time.

genericgoon

If the aistes end up been really hard titles there is always the sceal. Tough to get great marks in but if you only wanna a pass mark it shouldnt be too hard

Steve01

JC 2K3 wrote:

I don't see how you can learn a scéal incorporating all possible topics though. For example "Díoltas" could come up or "Cineáltas" could come up, two totally different subjects.....

Thats where the alterations come in. I applied the story to the 'Díoltas' option in the pre by making a few minor adjustments. The scéal ended with the words 'Nollaig shona duit, a striapach!'

Whim

JC 2K3 wrote:

Learning off an essay vs. learning Irish Grammar rules.....

More like learning off an essay. vs. learning Irish grammar rules, having excellent Irish (remember it's 40% for correctness and 40% for quality of language), coming up with ideas to write about, planning the essay, structuring the essay, etc.

Learning off about two pages of paragraphs on social problems with complex yet correct sentance structure will definately cover you. Every year there's a few different titles where it's easy to fit it in.