LC Honours Irish ... need help !!!

ChocoChips

I'm a 6th year student sitting the LC next June. I'm doing honours Irish but I find I'm struggling a bit. The biggest problem I'm having right now is how to make sentences and put words together. I'm always stuck when it comes to essay writing.

So any advices on what I could do to improve my Irish?? I'm trying to aim for at least a B2.

jd007

Hmm not being able to make sentences could prove to be a problem alright!;)

Calum196

I guess just learn off phrases. You need to be able to write about various topics.
But the whole "not being able to make sentences" thing is worrying, to say the least.

RexMundi

We were told that most of the marks are going for presenting the information as opposed to the quality of Irish with regards to the literary questions which account for a lot of the marks.

I would suggest learning off the phrases necessary for answers in the poems & stories that you have studied. It will give you a good start on them and hopefully help improve your vocab and general ability at the language.

Not knowing you personally I cannot say if this applies to you but many people I know do a lot worse in Irish than they should because they simply have no confidence in the language.

Mary007

Listen to Radió Na Gaeltachta each evening seriously!Even if at first you don't understand all of what they are saying if you listen every night you will see yourself improving and it'll make a massive difference when it comes to the Aural.

Secondly, practise practise practise your oral irish. If you can speak Irish you will be able to write it too! Just like you did when you were a baby learning English-you learned to speak it first! The oral is 25% of your marks and most people leave it to a couple of weeks before the oral exam, don't make the same mistake. If you can't speak well now you're not going to wake up one day magically being able to do just becuase the exam is looming. So get practising!

From doing these two things you will find writing much easier trust me! Aswell if you really want to put the work in try reading articles from something like Foinse off the internet, the more comprehensions you read the more your vocabulary will expand, plus it will make you faster at reading exam comprehensions!

Hope this helps!=)

bythewoods

RexMundi wrote: »

We were told that most of the marks are going for presenting the information as opposed to the quality of Irish with regards to the literary questions which account for a lot of the marks.

I would suggest learning off the phrases necessary for answers in the poems & stories that you have studied. It will give you a good start on them and hopefully help improve your vocab and general ability at the language.

Not knowing you personally I cannot say if this applies to you but many people I know do a lot worse in Irish than they should because they simply have no confidence in the language.

Hmmm, for the Aiste on Paper 1 it's marked 20 for Abhar and 80 for Gaeilge though. And that's worth a huge chunk of marks.
So your sentence structures and the quality of your Irish and all the rest are of fundamental importance.

My advice to you is to keep writing essays on loads of topics, especially ones that would fit under many headings, and get your teacher to correct them. Get phrases and vocab from your book (Fiuntas is pretty good) or the magazine Dreimire.
Then, when they're perfect, learn them off.

That's basically what I did this year for my essay- It was all my own work but I had aboiut 5-6 pages learned off about the Celtic Tiger and managed to get full marks in it.

Peppapig

Oh my god, that's like me all over. I just finished the LC there, when I started fifth year I moved up to higher after dropping from higher in 2nd year. I was all over the place because I found it so hard. I knew all the words and stuff but found grammer and sentences so hard too. I thought that I would fail it in the leaving but I just learned some universal phrases and fadhbanna na linne sin ( Problems in the World) as an essay about problems always comes up.

Guess what! I got a B2 in higher and was absolutely delighted

If you want it that bad you'll get it!:)

pjtb

I'd say the only way to improve your sentence making ability (:)) would be to listen to and read as much Irish as you can. I found, and still find myself picking up new phrases just from hearing things on nuacht, or noticing things I may have said wrong or differently. Nuacht RTE is only around 7 minutes long and is on at 5:45 each day (RTE1), you should try to watch it. I find that the presenter (usually Siún Nic Gearailt) is very easy to understand, and the reporters usually are too. It'd take some time, but eventually you should be able to understand most, if not all of what they're saying. The pictures accompanying what they're saying helps as well, which you wouldn't get if you were listening to RnaG.

To improve your saibhreas teanga for the essay you should acquaint yourself with some phrases, idioms and seanfhocail. I had notes from Shortcuts to Success on Irish Essays, (I think they were from the
book with a few exam parts in it, not the one based exclusively on an Aiste). When you're writing essays try and use them without having to look them up. The more essays you write, the easier this will come to you.

Go n-éirí leat!:D