Revised Irish Syllabus

Healium

Sorry if this has been posted before. Our Irish teacher was at an in-service today and told us about the new HL Irish course. Apparently;

NO Stair na Gaeilge
Only 5 poems to learn, all ordinary level poems
40% oral examination
You only have to read 7 chapters of Maidhc Dainín's book

Dumbed down, much? :rolleyes:

pathway33

will the oral be longer than it is now considering it will be worth more? or a higher standard expected in the oral?

Healium

pathway33 wrote: »

will the oral be longer than it is now considering it will be worth more? or a higher standard expected in the oral?

Same time, but the sliochts are gone

pathway33

Healium wrote: »

sliochts are gone

:eek:

jumpguy

Far far better.

Now we can finally learn the language, and how to speak it.

Healium

jumpguy wrote: »

Far far better.

Now we can finally learn the language, and how to speak it.

I'm not sure I agree. The current course as it is is much too packed, there's way too much to learn. But I don't think I'd put so much emphasis on oral at all...

I mean, those orals are a joke. Its all common sense, force-learning of the conditional tense and using your essay vocab for any abstract topics. Its this horrible, forced conversation about crap that neither of you is interested in talking about. Also, in the new format, you'll have to talk about a picture. You'll get it about 2 weeks before the exam. Pointless, if you ask me. 2 weeks is plenty of time to prepare fully for every question they could ask you on it, may aswell just decide on the picture at the start of 5th year...

I think chopping the HL poetry is a bit of a disaster. Yeah, the standard of poetry is crap, but we need to study it...
I would have dropped the number of required poems, with a mix of OL and HL.

Prose is unchanged, which is a bit annoying. They could have dropped one or two of those easily

As for reading only 7 chapters of a book, that's another joke. What's the point in that? In the case of Maidhc Dainín, that's only going to cover a tiny section and the questions will probably be fairly obvious.

Good that Stair na Gaeilge is gone. It'd be nice to read about it, but learning off paragraphs of stuff and nameless writers is very annoying

I know there are people who HATE Irish and think they can't speak it, but this isn't the way to solve it, in my opinion

Like, we're not in school to save the language, we're there to learn it, take in its written works, learn grammar etc. and expand upon Irish culture

The emphasis on oral shows that they want people to be able to speak Irish after secondary school, but this will probably have a negative effect. Its dumbing it down for those who hate Irish and want to be done with it, and those who are genuinely interested in it will only get to study tripe which'll turn them away from it, too

johnmcdnl

I hate the forced Irish in the oral... like it's just so what's your name tell me about your family is there any fadhbanna sosialta i do cheantar.. what course next year... what would you do if you were the minister for education...

it's just pointless.... once again it's just gonna make it easier for those that sit down and learn pages and pages of phrases and essay answers off it recite to the examiner...

and then those of us who could actually get by on a day to day basis talking irish get marked down for not having "honours phrases"

i really really do think something has to be done to promote actually being able to talk in a day to day basis rather than just being an exam of reciting essay answers...

and then all those other students coming out half crying that they didn't have an answer "prepared" for some question just sums up the state of the oral at the minute...

it really just needs to be marked on your overall ability to converse and not on how well you can ream of essays of stuff basically

juliancallan

I dropped to Ordinary Irish after the mocks, then heard about the new syllabus and was quite pissed off.
The course is still a fuc*king joke though, needs a complete overhaul, much like the whole second level system in Ireland.

gaeilgegrinds1

Oral is of a completely different format, much fairer, those who have studied will get the marks, fluency very much rewarded. Much easier course alright. Also, oral will be longer.

Healium

gaeilgegrinds1 wrote: »

Oral is of a completely different format, much fairer, those who have studied will get the marks, fluency very much rewarded. Much easier course alright. Also, oral will be longer.

I was told its still 15 minutes?
I hate that study attitude. There's a guy in my French class who wrote out about 50 pages of notes for his oral, all straight out of a book. He brought in a document from some revision book and learned off nothing but the phrases in it. He is far from good at French, and it seems unfair that he should get great marks for learning off stuff. He couldn't sustain a conversation to save his life. Luckily, the examiner seemed to hate him. Little victories

dlofnep

They should forget poetry.

If I had my way it would be 50% oral, 25% for an essay and 25% for a grammar exam.

KnifeWRENCH

Healium wrote: »

I think chopping the HL poetry is a bit of a disaster. Yeah, the standard of poetry is crap, but we need to study it...

Why do we "need" to study it, really? I did my LC nearly three years ago and I can safely say that I have never needed my knowledge of Irish poetry since.

Like, we're not in school to save the language, we're there to learn it, take in its written works, learn grammar etc. and expand upon Irish culture

The emphasis on oral shows that they want people to be able to speak Irish after secondary school, but this will probably have a negative effect. Its dumbing it down for those who hate Irish and want to be done with it, and those who are genuinely interested in it will only get to study tripe which'll turn them away from it, too

I see where you're coming from, and the only solution I can see is to make Irish optional for the Leaving Cert. That way, only students genuinely interested in Irish will study it and the course doesn't have to be dumbed down for students who hate the language and just want to be done with it.

I definitely think making the Oral more important is a good idea though. I did well in Irish because I learned off a load of notes, regurgitated them the day of the exam and forgot them all about 2 days later. My ability to actually speak Irish is terrible, and I think learning to converse in Irish is much more important than anything else they have on the course.

jumpguy

KnifeWRENCH wrote: »

I see where you're coming from, and the only solution I can see is to make Irish optional for the Leaving Cert. That way, only students genuinely interested in Irish will study it and the course doesn't have to be dumbed down for students who hate the language and just want to be done with it.

+1

I'm in favour of having Irish mandatory for JC, and then optional for LC. That way, students get a taste of what second level Irish is like for JC, and if they like it that much, they can do it for LC. Those who don't have an interest, can drop it at LC and go on their merry way, having a limited JC-level knowledge of the language. All this forced rote-learning of utter tripe only breeds hate for the Irish language, with a lot of students finishing it and thinking "thank God...I'll never have to read a word of Irish again!"

Healium

KnifeWRENCH wrote: »

Why do we "need" to study it, really? I did my LC nearly three years ago and I can safely say that I have never needed my knowledge of Irish poetry since.

Its not practical, its just to go deeper into culture and the arts of the language. I'll be the first to say that the standard of work on the Irish course is TRIPE, but if we drop it, then nobody will write anything new...

dlofnep

KnifeWRENCH wrote: »

I think learning to converse in Irish is much more important than anything else they have on the course.

Agreed. It's the only thing that should be important IMO. Once students have the ability to speak a language, then they can focus on poetry and other stuff that is irrelevant. I mean - Do we want to protect, and encourage the use of the Irish language, or do we want students to be pissed off with it, learning meaningless poetry?

Healium

dlofnep wrote: »

Agreed. It's the only thing that should be important IMO. Once students have the ability to speak a language, then they can focus on poetry and other stuff that is irrelevant. I mean - Do we want to protect, and encourage the use of the Irish language, or do we want students to be pissed off with it, learning meaningless poetry?

Yeah, but this is a exam subject. We're not out to save the language. For the small minority who want to go on and study Irish, or even for teachers, dumbing it down just seems a bit stupid. Obviously it won't have a huge effect, unlike this Project Maths rubbish. I HATE Honours Maths, but dumbing down our syllabus gives us a disadvantage in foreign colleges

dlofnep

Healium wrote: »

Yeah, but this is a exam subject. We're not out to save the language.

Wrong, that's precisely the reason why Irish is a core subject in our curriculum. To save the Irish language and encourage it's use. The problem however is that the curriculum is totally backwards.

They are trying to teach a language, like they would teach geography or history. It's not a subject - it's a language. And the primary goal of teaching a language should be to ensure that those studying it attain an element of fluency.

The Irish language suffers because the Government is unwilling to make radical change to save the language. They are unwilling to emphasise on what's important - spoken language.

The importance of poetry is way down at the bottom of the list of things that are important to language, in comparison to language as a spoken subject.

Healium wrote: »

For the small minority who want to go on and study Irish, or even for teachers, dumbing it down just seems a bit stupid. Obviously it won't have a huge effect, unlike this Project Maths rubbish. I HATE Honours Maths, but dumbing down our syllabus gives us a disadvantage in foreign colleges

It's not dumbing it down. It's improving it. I can speak Irish, and I sure as hell didn't learn it from school. School wasted my time and will continue to waste the time of students until it realises that you cannot teach a language, unless you teach it as a spoken language.