Leaving Cert as Gaeilge (Bonus Marks for Irish)

Indigo Sunrise

I'd say 90% of my class don't have Irish as their first language. Even for the ones who speak it at home it's still hard. There are so many technical words that you will have never heard of in Irish. I'm pretty much fluent in Irish but I still have to look up an awful lot of translations for these words. This isn't helped by the fact that for a lot of subject there is no textbook in Irish as well as other resources like grinds. There's definitely a lot more effort required to the LC in Irish even if Irish is your first language, because those people are also fluent in English anyway.

That being said I don't think there should be bonus marks for Irish. It's basically encouraging people to do something that is actually detrimental them, as they have to put in a lot of extra work and the vast majority of students will never use these Irish terms ever again. It will also be harder for them when they go to colege. Fair enough if you want to do it through Irish but I don't think you should get extra marks.

ChristinaA

MavisDavis wrote: »

This might be a bit off-topic, but I don't think bonus points for Irish is fair. You've been going to an Irish speaking school your whole life, I've been going to English speaking ones - why do you deserve more marks than I do?

Nobody is making you do the Leaving through Irish and most of the people who attempt it live in the Gaeltacht and speak Irish as their first language. English is my first language - where are my bonus marks?!

Not a lot of people speak it, well 350,000 and they are trying to save the language so if more people do their subjects through irish they are helping so thats why you get bonus!!:D

ChristinaA

Indigo Sunrise wrote: »

Fair enough if you want to do it through Irish but I don't think you should get extra marks.

why shouldnt you though?

Indigo Sunrise

ChristinaA wrote: »

why shouldnt you though?

Why should you? Why should someone get extra marks for doing it through Irish while someone doing it in English gets nothing? I don't understand why Irish should get that preferential treatment. The only difference I see is that doing it through Irish is a lot less useful in the real world. I don't see why you should be rewarded for doing something that's not useful.

xemmsx

MavisDavis wrote: »

This might be a bit off-topic, but I don't think bonus points for Irish is fair. You've been going to an Irish speaking school your whole life, I've been going to English speaking ones - why do you deserve more marks than I do?

Nobody is making you do the Leaving through Irish and most of the people who attempt it live in the Gaeltacht and speak Irish as their first language. English is my first language - where are my bonus marks?!

english is my first language too.. I dont live in a gaeltacht and I am the only person in my family that speaks irish.. Im fluent because I go to school where Irish is all you're allowed to speak.

We deserve the bonus because we don't have the same resources that people from an english speaking school have such as grinds, revision books etc.
Im not saying that we are more intelligent or anything but we do put in an awful lot more work and we HAVE to work alot harder to learn the same things and to be on the same standard of an english speaking school.. I mean you cant even examination papers in irish anymore and my school had to put them together themselves.
Basically I know everything you know for the leaving cert but I ALSO know it a different language!!!:D:D

drg85

There is absolutely no reason why bonus points should be applied for Irish; It is technically discimination; We have many eastern european students speaking Russian, Polish or some other slavic language as a first tongue and yet they do not receive any bonus for taking the exam in what is essentially an alien tongue to them. Why not get bonus points for doing the LC in French? Or German?

The argument usually falls back to 'heritage' and 'preservation'. That is a weak and dishonest tact though; the primary goal of language is to allow the communication of ideas and information. And that is why languages like English evolve so fast - they are widely used for interchange of ideas. It is also the primary reason languages die out -because they are no longer of the threshold density to allow meaningful communication. Lanuage should be a living thing, constantly evovling. That is not the case with Irish - it is essentially a dead language with no reason for continued support.

Sure people may be allowed to study it if they so choose, and that option should be there, the same as if one elected to study Latin. (However I'd wager Latin would be a more useful subject to have as it forms the backbone of all the romantic languages and thus would be useful in learning English, French, Spanish etc..) But I can see no reason why Irish should either be compulsory OR why one should be rewarded extra points for doing so. It essentially amounts to an unfair and unwarrented bias.

Car_Car

xemmsx wrote: »

english is my first language too.. I dont live in a gaeltacht and I am the only person in my family that speaks irish.. Im fluent because I go to school where Irish is all you're allowed to speak.

We deserve the bonus because we don't have the same resources that people from an english speaking school have such as grinds, revision books etc.
Im not saying that we are more intelligent or anything but we do put in an awful lot more work and we HAVE to work alot harder to learn the same things and to be on the same standard of an english speaking school.. I mean you cant even examination papers in irish anymore and my school had to put them together themselves.
Basically I know everything you know for the leaving cert but I ALSO know it a different language!!!:D:D

I am in the exact same situation, english is my first language too, while I go to an all Irish secondary school it certainly does not mean were getting sympathy points or anything its not the hardest through Irish but I recently started doing Chemistry In english and Its like dropping down pass chemistry. As in the above post we dont have the same resources...no of those revise wise books or anythng.

Oh and You can kinda pick and choose what subjects you want to do in Irish but you have to answer everything in Irish (for maths this isnt much of a problem)

xemmsx

drg85 wrote: »

There is absolutely no reason why bonus points should be applied for Irish; It is technically discimination; We have many eastern european students speaking Russian, Polish or some other slavic language as a first tongue and yet they do not receive any bonus for taking the exam in what is essentially an alien tongue to them. Why not get bonus points for doing the LC in French? Or German?

The argument usually falls back to 'heritage' and 'preservation'. That is a weak and dishonest tact though; the primary goal of language is to allow the communication of ideas and information. And that is why languages like English evolve so fast - they are widely used for interchange of ideas. It is also the primary reason languages die out -because they are no longer of the threshold density to allow meaningful communication. Lanuage should be a living thing, constantly evovling. That is not the case with Irish - it is essentially a dead language with no reason for continued support.

Sure people may be allowed to study it if they so choose, and that option should be there, the same as if one elected to study Latin. (However I'd wager Latin would be a more useful subject to have as it forms the backbone of all the romantic languages and thus would be useful in learning English, French, Spanish etc..) But I can see no reason why Irish should either be compulsory OR why one should be rewarded extra points for doing so. It essentially amounts to an unfair and unwarrented bias.

ehm maybe because we live in Ireland it should be widely respected what our official national language is.... bunreacht na hEireann is written in irish not in english not in german, or french or any other language!
its not just our heritage or our history it is a language that is used to run this country everyday....
and its becoming more and more popular so I would hardly call it "dead". I for one love it as a language and I think anyway to keep at alive and strong should be embraced even if that does mean that I have to do extra work for the leaving cert... I still wouldn't change it for the world and I know for a fact Im not the only one:D

Ferris_Bueller

I just sat my Leaving Cert through Irish, and to be honest I don't think its worth the extra marks. Don't know about other schools, but in my school a lot of the subjects were done from English books and then translated, which made it extremely confusing for me anyway. I still done every subject through Irish, although I'm convinced if Biology was going to be important to me I would have done it through english, however im hoping the markers are a bit more lenient(sp?) towards Irish exam papers.

rainbowtrout

Ferris_Bueller wrote: »

I just sat my Leaving Cert through Irish, and to be honest I don't think its worth the extra marks. Don't know about other schools, but in my school a lot of the subjects were done from English books and then translated, which made it extremely confusing for me anyway. I still done every subject through Irish, although I'm convinced if Biology was going to be important to me I would have done it through english, however im hoping the markers are a bit more lenient(sp?) towards Irish exam papers.

No, we're not. You get graded the exact same way as those who sat it in English. You either know the stuff or you don't regardless of what language you wrote your answers in.

wayhey

Irish is bad enough through Irish, never mind 6 others!!

tubalcain

In response to many points made:
As stated previously
You CAN pick individual subjects.
You do not get across the board 10% additional marks
It varies dependant on subject and the original mark obtained
Basically if you achieve less than 75% you get 10% in some subjects, 5% in some and 3% in others and 0% in the rest.

If you achieve more than 75% in the original mark you get a pro rata drop to where you get 0% at a 100% original mark

If you answer questions in a mix of english and irish you get NO additional mark for that exam

Using this system to encourage Irish is not very efficient or effective, the most productive way to improve Irish is to actually teach Irish. Which obviously is already compulsory

By researching previous census results you will see that a remarkable percentage consider themselves fluent, in reality this percentage is in fact quite low, for what is supposedly the first national language. It is notionally , however at present more people living in Ireland are fluent in Polish and nearly as many speak Russian, as this is a common language shared by many former Soviet states when not using their own language

Irish is not dead, but it is receiving an unatural amount of support for a living language. The reasons for it's near demise and apparent shaky ressurection are of not the point of this post.It should not be solely on it's usefulness to learn Irish, but if it were I would recommend learning French, Spanish and Chinese as this would enable you to speak to half the known world. Irish will enable to you to speak to a few individuals spread across the the known world

The fact that someone want to go to UCD to get an engineering place or Trinity maths place or whatever can be usurped by another candidate because they did a subject in Irish is at best unfair and in all likelyhood contrary to equality laws. Something I aim to research further.

What relevance has speaking Irish got in being able to build a bridge or perform heart surgery? Nothing.

As we are now very much a multi-cultural society, like it or not, successful or not we have a situation whereby it is patently unfair on non-irish speakers be they Irish nationals or from some other part of the globe but educated here.

Basically if you wish to learn a language any language that is ok, but do not confuse the artificial insentivisation of gaining extra marks of doing a subject in irish, with a positive stand-alone insentive that will engender a more rounded approach and a wish to learn for the right reasons.

randylonghorn

tubalcain wrote: »

The fact that someone want to go to UCD to get an engineering place or Trinity maths place or whatever can be usurped by another candidate because they did a subject in Irish is at best unfair and in all likelyhood contrary to equality laws. Something I aim to research further.

Wouldn't the same argument hold for someone aiming for History in Trinity losing out to someone with extra points from the proposed bonus marks for Hons Maths?

rainbowtrout

tubalcain wrote: »

The fact that someone want to go to UCD to get an engineering place or Trinity maths place or whatever can be usurped by another candidate because they did a subject in Irish is at best unfair and in all likelyhood contrary to equality laws. Something I aim to research further.

What relevance has speaking Irish got in being able to build a bridge or perform heart surgery? Nothing.

Not saying I agree with the requirement, but what relevance does speaking English have to performing heart surgery or building a bridge? You have to pass English to get into the course as well.

It doesn't contravene any equality laws.... in reality it probably complies with them considering Irish and English are both official languages of the state.

Now if you had to pass one but not the other that could be a problem...

In the ITs you might consider the system fairer, students are only required to pass Irish or English.

workingstudent

we are doing our maths in irish to 'use the system to our advantage' as our teacher likes to say..not much difference we're just going to tick the answering through irish box on the day..not saying beforehand that we are going to be doing it through irish

tubalcain

It doesn't contravene any equality laws.... in reality it probably complies with them considering Irish and English are both official languages of the state.

What makes a language an official language, history, usage on a daily basis, saying it is,or just plain wishful thinking
This where the contents don't match the label, reliable figures are not readily available, I do mean reliable, questions in recent the most census tried to obtain proficiency levels of speaking irish, but this is still based on subjective claims. In reality the number of fluent Irish speakers dramatically differs from the statistics gained from replies from individuals.
Some statistics show over 1.5 million people speak Irish, some show that fluent Irish speakers number around 20,000 I would be surprised at either figure being correct, perhaps somewhere in between but nearer the tens of thousands than the million mark
So whilst nominally the official language Irish is far less widespread in it's daily use than some other languages in use in Ireland today. Check out the bill for Irish translators in Irish courts it is remarkably low. I know this has other factors but the bill is less than 5,000 euro
As a test go into 20 shops and ask for your purchases in Irish you can let me know if I am wrong. Do let me know where this takes place as it will not be correct in some areas I have no doubt.

Not saying I agree with the requirement, but what relevance does speaking English have to performing heart surgery or building a bridge? You have to pass English to get into the course as well.

Indeed there you have made my point better than I did.... language has no bearing what so ever, be it English, Irish or Swahili. Obtaining an advantage because of language in a subject that does not rely on a specific language is not logical.

I should say that with the level set at 75% for these bonus marks to apply, that I do not believe it would be worth the hassle if you are not already fluent. If you are achieving 75%, far better to work harder in the original subject.

This scheme to my mind can only really help those pupils who attend gaelscoil get better marks in other subjects

rainbowtrout

workingstudent wrote: »

we are doing our maths in irish to 'use the system to our advantage' as our teacher likes to say..not much difference we're just going to tick the answering through irish box on the day..not saying beforehand that we are going to be doing it through irish

Will your exam centre have that many Irish papers though particularly when you're not registered to take the exam through Irish? It doesn't benefit many students, I correct through Irish and students don't gain too many marks from it.

rainbowtrout

tubalcain wrote: »

What makes a language an official language, history, usage on a daily basis, saying it is,or just plain wishful thinking
This where the contents don't match the label, reliable figures are not readily available, I do mean reliable, questions in recent the most census tried to obtain proficiency levels of speaking irish, but this is still based on subjective claims. In reality the number of fluent Irish speakers dramatically differs from the statistics gained from replies from individuals.
Some statistics show over 1.5 million people speak Irish, some show that fluent Irish speakers number around 20,000 I would be surprised at either figure being correct, perhaps somewhere in between but nearer the tens of thousands than the million mark
So whilst nominally the official language Irish is far less widespread in it's daily use than some other languages in use in Ireland today. Check out the bill for Irish translators in Irish courts it is remarkably low. I know this has other factors but the bill is less than 5,000 euro
As a test go into 20 shops and ask for your purchases in Irish you can let me know if I am wrong. Do let me know where this takes place as it will not be correct in some areas I have no doubt.




Indeed there you have made my point better than I did.... language has no bearing what so ever, be it English, Irish or Swahili. Obtaining an advantage because of language in a subject that does not rely on a specific language is not logical.

I should say that with the level set at 75% for these bonus marks to apply, that I do not believe it would be worth the hassle if you are not already fluent. If you are achieving 75%, far better to work harder in the original subject.

This scheme to my mind can only really help those pupils who attend gaelscoil get better marks in other subjects

I'm not disputing the fact that hardly anyone speaks it on a daily basis, I was just making the point which you picked up on, that it's just as irrelevant as needing to pass English to enter an Engineering course. Having said that, it is an advantage to show that you can grasp a language at a certain level (regardless of which one it is) as you will have to communicate your ideas to people in the workplace and will be expected to have a decent command of the language in third level to complete your studies. Of course this does make Irish redundant in most cases as only Irish language courses, Primary teaching through Irish and a variety of courses in NUIG are taught through Irish.

In terms of taking exams through Irish, I don't have a problem with students having the option particularly if students have it as their first spoken language (in Gaeltacht areas) or are being taught through Irish, but if that is the case I don't see why they should get bonus marks simply for choosing to do their exams through their chosen language. Why should they get extra marks in Chemistry/History/Accounting etc for sitting their exams in their first language when those sitting them through English cannot? Particularly when the language has no bearing on their ability in the subject in question.

I correct through Irish and as you said, the ones that get above 75% really have nothing to gain from it and the ones who can get 10% of their total mark added on are scoring low enough that it doesn't make a huge difference to their grade. The optimum score to gain from the bonus marks is about 65-70%. An addition of 10% of the total marks in this bracket will give the student a guaranteed 5 extra points and if their marks fall the right way get them 10 extra points.

Eg. a student scoring 74% on a paper marked out of 300 will get 222/300. So 10% of their mark added on = 22. 222+22=244

244/300 = 81%, bringing them from a B3 to B1. Above 75% as you said, it's not worth the hassle.

randylonghorn

tubalcain wrote: »

What makes a language an official language, history, usage on a daily basis, saying it is, or just plain wishful thinking

The Constitution.

tubalcain wrote: »

This where the contents don't match the label, reliable figures are not readily available, I do mean reliable, questions in recent the most census tried to obtain proficiency levels of speaking irish, but this is still based on subjective claims. In reality the number of fluent Irish speakers dramatically differs from the statistics gained from replies from individuals.
Some statistics show over 1.5 million people speak Irish, some show that fluent Irish speakers number around 20,000 I would be surprised at either figure being correct, perhaps somewhere in between but nearer the tens of thousands than the million mark

I wouldn't argue with you there, in fairness.

tubalcain wrote: »

So whilst nominally the official language Irish is far less widespread in it's daily use than some other languages in use in Ireland today.

Whether that is accurate or not (and I suspect Polish is the only language which *may* fit your claim), Irish *is* native to this country, none of the others are. The more extreme would probably argue that even English is not native, though given that it is the first language of at least 95% of the population, and has been for a while, I think we have to begin accepting it as 'native', even if a johnny-come-lately.

After all, even Irish / Celtic originally came to our shores from elsewhere, even if it's been spoken in one form or other on this island for 3 - 4 thousand years.

tubalcain wrote: »

Check out the bill for Irish translators in Irish courts it is remarkably low. I know this has other factors but the bill is less than 5,000 euro

I wouldn't take this as a good indicator tbh.

I have plenty of cousins who speak Irish as their first and daily language, but almost all of them have perfect or near-perfect English as well. None of them would be bothered to insist on Irish in court, if they ever ended up there. Normally, it is only those with a very strong political viewpoint who do so ... and some of those would not be native speakers at all!

gaeilgegrinds1

Considering three of my classmates are Irish translators I doubt that figure could be anywhere correct. Two working here, one in Brussels. The Shell to Sea Campaign alone has one of them working for months.

randylonghorn

gaeilgegrinds1 wrote: »

Considering three of my classmates are Irish translators I doubt that figure could be anywhere correct. Two working here, one in Brussels. The Shell to Sea Campaign alone has one of them working for months.

In fairness, he did say:

tubalcain wrote: »

Check out the bill for Irish translators in Irish courts it is remarkably low.

gaeilgegrinds1

Most of the two in Ireland work in the courts though. And between them they make more than 5000.

workingstudent

rainbowtrout wrote: »

Will your exam centre have that many Irish papers though particularly when you're not registered to take the exam through Irish?

there are only five of us and we dont want the irish version of the paper anyway...our papers will probably be sent to an english marker and they'l prob correct them themselves because they get a bonus for correcting irish scripts.. and we'l get a few extra marks aswel hopefully

rainbowtrout

workingstudent wrote: »

there are only five of us and we dont want the irish version of the paper anyway...our papers will probably be sent to an english marker and they'l prob correct them themselves because they get a bonus for correcting irish scripts.. and we'l get a few extra marks aswel hopefully

That's not the way the system works. Examiners just don't keep papers and mark them through Irish. Examiners choose to correct through Irish and are assigned the papers that are corrected through Irish. Not all examiners are capable of examining through Irish.

And if you're doing the paper through Irish you'll have to get a paper through Irish, after all if you understand the language you won't need an English paper.....

gaeilgegrinds1

I'd be rather sceptical of what your teacher is trying to do, surely you should be practising the papers as Gaeilge as well...

rainbowtrout

workingstudent wrote: »

there are only five of us and we dont want the irish version of the paper anyway...our papers will probably be sent to an english marker and they'l prob correct them themselves because they get a bonus for correcting irish scripts.. and we'l get a few extra marks aswel hopefully

Are you actually going to write any Irish on the paper?? You do realise that ticking the Irish box on the front of the paper means absolutely nothing if you answer in English? Or if you start the first couple of sentences or first question in Irish and the rest in English that it is classed as English and you get no marks???

sk8board

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/68735571#Comment_68735571

Do you mind my asking, (13 years later), if the bonus points for the LC are still calculated today as they were in your 2010 example above?

really I’m trying to understand if it’s “10% of the % you DIDNT get”, which is what I’m hearing, or “10% of the marks you DID get”. In your example above, it’s the latter

thanks :)

rainbowtrout

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121511710#Comment_121511710

Ya, it's 10% of the marks that you did get. In some subjects it's only 5% due to the limited use of Irish in the exam, e.g. foreign languages.