Am I wrong to think this isn`t fair?

seanbmc

I have heard from a guy in my class that hes going to do his native language exam on top of all his other exams this year,what I thought at first that it was like any native language exam(like our english exam)

Turns out its not and its pretty much a guaranteed A1(or close enough to) for him. Hes also using the HEAR program for reduced points.

Is this fair? Or am I wrong?

Love to hear peoples opinions.

KatCookie

Whats unfair about him doing his native language exam? He will probably have to do some study for that too, study a novel or the likes.
If he does Irish too, then he has more work for himself.
and if he doesnt do Irish, he may need another language for college?

If he is doing the HEAR programme, i dont see how if affects on you, glad to see that he is making use of a scheme made available for people like him (unless of coure he is lying and doesnt need the HEAR programme cos he's super wealthy)

lou91

No, it's completely fair, seeing as how he probably has to work harder than everyone else to do the rest of the subjects in a non-native language.

justaday

your wrong actually. i know a native arabic speaker who doesn't do arabic because he wouldn't do well in it.

i don't think the polish/arabic exams are like french/german/spanish.

they are more like irish

spiderpig2k7

Nothing in life is "fair" but you should just concentrate on your own situation and get through the points system and stop worrying about others.

number10a

It is fair. Just like you can go to France or Slovakia or Greece and sit an exam in Irish or English (or any other official EU language) in their equivalent of the Leaving Cert.

This guy has moved country, had to learn English to a standard that allowed him to get by in six or seven other subjects, and is probably going to have to work a hell of a lot harder than everyone else to do well in these subjects. The Leaving Cert French, German and Spanish exams are there to (supposedly) show that you are competent in those languages. All he is doing is proving that he is competent in another language.

seanbmc

Well what I heard from this guy he thinks that hes going to walk in and ace the exam,virtually no study at all,thats what his brother did anyway. If what you guys said is true hes in for a shock.

Dubs

I can see where your coming from that his test in his language isnt nearly as hard to him as our english test is to us (we arent guaranteed an A in english where as he almost definately is in his language).

But you have to keep in mind that all of the other tests will be in a foreign language to him. Maybe he's as fluent in english as we are though but they cant just make the tests harder for one person.

--hughesy--

Of course it is fair. I attend an international school and even though I am Irish, its easy to see how much non native English speakers struggle in subjects such as geography, business and ( obviously ) English. So in my opinion, why not give them a break? Just imagine you were in Germany, and yes you may be good at German but still it would be a struggle to stay on par with the rest of the native speakers. Also in the English as a foreign language class you would do great and then they would think it was unfair!...:o

ddef

A lad in my class is from Poland and he is doing the polish exam. He says it is hard in the fact that he can clearly understand all the polish, but the way they catch them out is by asking the question in difficult english.

ayumi

you see some pple who do arabic for example and its there native laguage,they might not know it well,like they speak with it but cant write an essay on it and i have friends like this that have lived here for most of there lives or born here and dont know how to write in their laguage

spurious

ddef wrote: »

A lad in my class is from Poland and he is doing the polish exam. He says it is hard in the fact that he can clearly understand all the polish, but the way they catch them out is by asking the question in difficult english.

The questions are in Polish on the Polish LC exam.
See: http://www.examinations.ie/archive/exampapers/2009/LC548ALP000EV.pdf (.pdf file)

The written Polish required for high marks in the LC is of quite a high standard and stylistically a good standard is expected. We don't really examine the standard of written English in English exams to the same standard anymore.

Being able to speak Polish well is not the same as being able to write it well.

pathway33

spurious wrote: »

We don't really examine the standard of written English in English exams to the same standard anymore.

Does this mean an essay that would have got you a C2 20 years ago would now get you a B1?

spurious

pathway33 wrote: »

Does this mean an essay that would have got you a C2 20 years ago would now get you a B1?

Let's not open that can of worms.

If you ever manage to get your hands on Inter Cert. papers from the 60s and 70s, they are a real eye-opener.

gant0

its pretty scab alright but i ain't complainig!!i get ta do russian for the LC even tho ive been here for most of my life and have perfect english!!!:)......oh and eastern european exams are really easy!!!nothing like honours irish english an maybe a little harder than pass french.......and people from say a country like latvia or lithuania get an almost straight up 200 points in the lc cause they get to do their native language + russian since those countries are former soviet union so every1 speaks russian anyway:).....lucky for some i suppose!!!

spurious

The Russian exam follows a different format as it is not an EU language and is a fairly established LC subject. It has parts that are answered in English like the other standard modern language exams.

The exams in 'new' languages are in a different format, answered without English and cannot be taken by non-native speakers. Russian can be taken by anyone who speaks or has learned Russian.

**Timbuk2**

It is fair. If you went to France, wouldn't you take the English exam?

Imagine how easy the tapework would be! And the oral (if they have one) would be a laugh!

NoHands

seanbmc wrote: »

Well what I heard from this guy he thinks that hes going to walk in and ace the exam,virtually no study at all,thats what his brother did anyway. If what you guys said is true hes in for a shock.

They are just trying to make you feel better. I walked into spanish and aced it. Hell, my oral examiner laughed at the end and was like... "I think I made more mistakes than you did...."

pathway33

anyone know the french equivalent of www.examinations.ie ? be very interesting to see the bacculeurate (sp?) english exam

Lawliet

http://www.ibo.org/diploma/assessment/exampapers/

partyatmygaff

http://www.ibo.org/diploma/curriculum/examples/samplepapers/documents/gp1_englisha1hl2.pdf



Wow..... That is on a whole other level compared to the Leaving Cert. That's their Higher level.

This is ordinary level which seems to be at the same level as the HL Leaving cert paper :eek:
http://www.ibo.org/diploma/curriculum/examples/samplepapers/documents/gp2_englisha2sl2.pdf

It's hard to believe a French exam for English is harder than an Exam for english set in an English Speaking country.

seanbmc

partyatmygaff wrote: »

http://www.ibo.org/diploma/curriculum/examples/samplepapers/documents/gp1_englisha1hl2.pdf



Wow..... That is on a whole other level compared to the Leaving Cert. That's their Higher level.

This is ordinary level which seems to be at the same level as the HL Leaving cert paper :eek:
http://www.ibo.org/diploma/curriculum/examples/samplepapers/documents/gp2_englisha2sl2.pdf

It's hard to believe a French exam for English is harder than an Exam for english set in an English Speaking country.

The french learn English from a very young age,thats probably why its harder

pathway33

seanbmc wrote: »

The french learn English from a very young age,thats probably why its harder

and we don't

partyatmygaff

seanbmc wrote: »

The french learn English from a very young age,thats probably why its harder

Em, so did you learn only Irish throughout primary school?
:pac:

pathway33

those french english exams are seriously scary. Thank God for Ireland

seanbmc

partyatmygaff wrote: »

Em, so did you learn only Irish throughout primary school?
:pac:

Whats your point? Of course I didn`t

partyatmygaff

seanbmc wrote: »

Whats your point? Of course I didn`t

Well you said the French learn english from a very young age trying to justify why their english exams are harder. Surely if english is our main language we would learn English from an even earlier age then the french.
Non?
:pac:

seanbmc

partyatmygaff wrote: »

Well you said the French learn english from a very young age trying to justify why their english exams are harder. Surely if english is our main language we would learn English from an even earlier age then the french.
Non?
:pac:

Their English exams are harder than what? Our English exams? Sorry for the confusion, monsieur :pac:

miss no stars

Is the french bac not different to the IB?

Besides, I think it's a given that the standard expected of leaving cert students is well... low.

Wait til ye all get to college and meet the erasmus students... They'll show ya what learning is!

rainbowtrout

gant0 wrote: »

its pretty scab alright but i ain't complainig!!i get ta do russian for the LC even tho ive been here for most of my life and have perfect english!!!:)......oh and eastern european exams are really easy!!!nothing like honours irish english an maybe a little harder than pass french.......and people from say a country like latvia or lithuania get an almost straight up 200 points in the lc cause they get to do their native language + russian since those countries are former soviet union so every1 speaks russian anyway:).....lucky for some i suppose!!!

you only get to count one of your 'native' languages for points if they are not the standard languages examined in the leaving cert. so you can take polish and latvian but only count one for points

ddef

To be frank, I get more annoyed at the advantage lads living on a farm in the Gaeltacht get.
Irish A1. Agricultural science A1. Agricultural economics A1.
That's 300 points off the bat.
I know they can't help it, but I'd be more concerned about their 300 point lead to a polish lads 100.

jd007

Maybe people should be more concerned about their own points than what others get.

pathway33

ddef wrote: »

To be frank, I get more annoyed at the advantage lads living on a farm in the Gaeltacht get.
Irish A1. Agricultural science A1. Agricultural economics A1.
That's 300 points off the bat.

plus the extra 10% of whatever mark they get in a lot of other subjects for doing the whole leaving cert through irish.

So if they really got 73% in geography, a B3, they automatically get boosted up to a B1. Nice easy extra 10 points.

laughin all the way to the CAO they are. They're probably on HEAR as well . Good job we have HPAT to keep these boyos away from my body

partyatmygaff

ddef wrote: »

To be frank, I get more annoyed at the advantage lads living on a farm in the Gaeltacht get.
Irish A1. Agricultural science A1. Agricultural economics A1.
That's 300 points off the bat.
I know they can't help it, but I'd be more concerned about their 300 point lead to a polish lads 100.

Tbh if I had to live on a farm in a gaeltacht I would see the 300 points as compensation

degausserxo

pathway33 wrote: »

plus the extra 10% of whatever mark they get in every other subject for doing the whole leaving cert through irish.

So if they really got 73% in geography, a B3, they automatically get boosted up to a B1. Nice easy extra 10 points.

laughin all the way to the CAO they are. They're probably on HEAR as well . Good job we have HPAT to keep these boyos away from my body

Please. They have to learn the poetry, prose, drama, stair na teanga and everything else just like we do. I know people that did the LC through Irish and had a hell of a worse time than those of us who go to English-speaking schools - they used English textbooks and had to translate everything themselves. Fair fúcks to them; with the amount of learning they have to put into it (I'm pretty sure you and I learned a whole bunch of new English words for the senior cycle, they had the added stress of learning them, translating them and remembering them - easy? I don't think so) I'm not gonna begrudge them 10%.

Also, a friend of mine is Romanian and was going to do the Romanian exam for the LC, but there are various texts involved, it'd be the same as our English exam.

almostnever

ddef wrote: »

To be frank, I get more annoyed at the advantage lads living on a farm in the Gaeltacht get.
Irish A1. Agricultural science A1. Agricultural economics A1.
That's 300 points off the bat.
I know they can't help it, but I'd be more concerned about their 300 point lead to a polish lads 100.

Summer of '08, I was in the gaeltacht for the Leaving Cert results. About 40 of the locals were getting results,including 2 of the grandchildren of my bean an tí.
Highest I heard in Irish was a B1, with most of the people I kinda knew getting Cs and B3s. Far from a guaranteed A,certainly. I remember actually how freaked out I was then-I was just about to go into 6th year and thought I was screwed if these fluent speakers were getting Bs and Cs.
Ended up getting a B3 and now that I'm repeating I'm aiming for an A. Because it's entirely down to the individual, not anything else. (Well obviously there are other contributing factors,but you know what I mean.)

Nobody is guaranteed an A1 in anything. Trust me on that one.

phasers

I knew a girl who spoke both English and French fluently, was guaranteed an A1 in French and had an Irish exemption

I hated her

I think the fairness depends on how good the person's English is.

efb

People beliving ASTI hype, the leaving cert wouldn't equate with the BAC, on any subject!

rainbowtrout

ddef wrote: »

To be frank, I get more annoyed at the advantage lads living on a farm in the Gaeltacht get.
Irish A1. Agricultural science A1. Agricultural economics A1.
That's 300 points off the bat.
I know they can't help it, but I'd be more concerned about their 300 point lead to a polish lads 100.

Generalise much? Everyone who lives in the Gaeltacht must be fluent Irish and be a farmer! Students who take ag science and ag economics are not allowed count both for points so that combination doesn't exist.

Maybe you could also account for the droves of students in grind schools taking up ag science. To the best of my knowledge none of the grind schools are located in the Gaeltacht.

pathway33 wrote: »

plus the extra 10% of whatever mark they get in every other subject for doing the whole leaving cert through irish.

So if they really got 73% in geography, a B3, they automatically get boosted up to a B1. Nice easy extra 10 points.

laughin all the way to the CAO they are. They're probably on HEAR as well . Good job we have HPAT to keep these boyos away from my body

Get your facts right before you start spouting off. A student who sits the exam in Irish gets 10% of the mark they are awarded added on as a bonus up to 70%. Anything higher than that is given less on a sliding scale. So a person getting 73 will not get a B1.

If it's so easy why don't you do your exams in Irish? Then you can avail of the easy points.

I correct leaving cert exams through Irish and more often that not students that were registered to take the Irish paper sit it in English instead, so it's obviously not that easy.

pathway33

rainbowtrout wrote: »

Get your facts right before you start spouting off. A student who sits the exam in Irish gets 10% of the mark they are awarded added on as a bonus up to 70%. Anything higher than that is given less on a sliding scale. So a person getting 73 will not get a B1.

Get your facts right. The sliding scale starts at 75%. A person getting 73% in geography (and many other subjects) will get a B1. Yes I was wrong to think it was every subject. The bonus mark is only 5% in languages (except greek and latin) and mathsy subjects and there's no bonus in art (although obviously there is for history of art) or tech drawing.

Edit: Subjects listed are not the complete list. For anyone genuinely interested go to www.examinations.ie

Mayoegian

ddef wrote: »

To be frank, I get more annoyed at the advantage lads living on a farm in the Gaeltacht get.
Irish A1. Agricultural science A1. Agricultural economics A1.
That's 300 points off the bat.
I know they can't help it, but I'd be more concerned about their 300 point lead to a polish lads 100.

pathway33 wrote: »

plus the extra 10% of whatever mark they get in every other subject for doing the whole leaving cert through irish.

So if they really got 73% in geography, a B3, they automatically get boosted up to a B1. Nice easy extra 10 points.

laughin all the way to the CAO they are. They're probably on HEAR as well . Good job we have HPAT to keep these boyos away from my body

partyatmygaff wrote: »

Tbh if I had to live on a farm in a gaeltacht I would see the 300 points as compensation

Well these replies reek of jealousy.

pathway33

MaighEoGoDeo wrote: »

Well these replies reek of jealousy.

not one bit. Good luck to them. It makes no difference to me what someone else gets in their leaving cert. Each student to their own strengths

pathway33

rainbowtrout wrote: »

Students who take ag science and ag economics are not allowed count both for points so that combination doesn't exist.

Is that true? I thought it was the ag economics and economics combination that was excluded

partyatmygaff

MaighEoGoDeo wrote: »

Well these replies reek of jealousy.

How the hell did my post come across as jealous?

rainbowtrout

pathway33 wrote: »

Is that true? I thought it was the ag economics and economics combination that was excluded

and also the ag science/ag economics combination because of the ag content.

felic

Speaking as someone who got an A1 in Higher French in my Leaving.. I went to France for a summer after that and I understood NOTHING!
Its not as easy as you may think for this guy. Every exam he will do will be in a foreign language to him and do you know how difficult that will be; how important it is to 'understand the question and know whats being asked'?

So although it may seem unfair say a German guy taking the German exam.. its not really that unfair. Thats why bilingual and trilingual children are appearing.

Orlaladuck

That 'Gaeltacht' notion is complete Rubbish. My mum is completely fluent in Irish and it's absolutely NO help to me whatsoever. My brother even had an exemption - that was more due to moving countries however but the point is just because you live in a gaeltacht does not make you good at irish! I have numerous cousins and friends up in Connemara, went to a Gaelscoil, speak irish about 80% of the time and they still did Ordinary level Irish. Being able to speak it doesn't enable you to be able to write in it At All. Also a lot of the time they just sub in english words where they don't know the Irish - even very basic vocab you would learn in Higher level.

But returning to the point of this topic - I can see why you'd be annoyed certainly but at the end of the day that could be the only A1 he gets because of the language barrier!

pathway33

rainbowtrout wrote: »

and also the ag science/ag economics combination because of the ag content.

There is no exclusion to a student combining agricultural economics and agricultural science because of the ag content.

Agricultural economics cannot be combined with economics because of the economics content.



Subject Exclusions
Candidates may not take any of following subject combinations: 1. Physics and Chemistry and either of the separate subjects, Physics or Chemistry.
2. Economics and Agricultural Economics.
3. Classical Studies and Latin.
4. Classical Studies and Ancient Greek.

DaveyDave

I don't think it's very fair at all. If I was fluent in French, I would find it extremely easy to say stuff like "My name is David, I live in Dublin with my mam in a 3 bedroom house in the suburbs"

Loads of people do it and it's piss easy for them to get a high grade as they have an advantage over the rest of us. Me doing French is about as easy as a French person doing Irish.

Lawliet

DaveyDave wrote: »

I don't think it's very fair at all. If I was fluent in French, I would find it extremely easy to say stuff like "My name is David, I live in Dublin with my mam in a 3 bedroom house in the suburbs"

Loads of people do it and it's piss easy for them to get a high grade as they have an advantage over the rest of us. Me doing French is about as easy as a French person doing Irish.

Just like you have an advantage over a French speaking person doing the leaving cert when it comes to the other five subjects being examined.

Cathal93

Honestly I HATE this Hear idea, someone can get more points than you because they havent enough money. I'm not the most intelligent person in the world, and my place in college might be taken because I'm not under the poverty line?

With the language, it seems unfair. But someone who's good at art, or music, or home ec, or any other practical subjects may have innate talents that others dont so that could be deemed unfair no?