To learn off or not to learn off..

Chuchoter

So I'm doing honours Irish and I'm trying to decide if it is a bad decision to rote learn off answers for poetry questions and letters. I didn't do this for JC and think this was my downfall, as I had several small grammar mistakes that all add up. Is it better to learn it off answers and have it perfect but unflexible or improvise on the day

Healium

The Leaving Cert is all about learning off, sadly.

randylonghorn

In general, I would say *understand* rather than learn off, in relation to most things at least, much easier to be flexible on the day.

Stuff like this ... probably a grey area, esp. if you are struggling with the language.

Maybe prepare / learn some sentences / paragraphs, and practise adapting them / linking them together in different ways to answer variations on questions, rather than just learning off full answers and then struggling to adapt them for the first time in the exam?

irish_man

crayolastereo wrote: »

So I'm doing honours Irish and I'm trying to decide if it is a bad decision to rote learn off answers for poetry questions and letters. I didn't do this for JC and think this was my downfall, as I had several small grammar mistakes that all add up. Is it better to learn it off answers and have it perfect but unflexible or improvise on the day

In irish paper 2 not that many marks are lost from bad grammar. i learnt off everything and took a bit of a gamble. everything came up and i regurgitated everything i could remember. i threw in words from the question though, whether i knew understood it or not.
I'd advise learning off answers. It worked for me anyway

JamesJB

For everything in LC Irish it's all about stock vocabulary, phrases you learn off and learn to apply to everything that's asked of you.

Up to LC if you don't go to a Gaelscoil Irish is just so scattered. Then you get to the LC and suddenly they want you to apply this mystical knowledge to advanced areas. It's a bit of a joke.

Get a hardback or Pukka pad and put as much vocabulary and as many phrases as you can into it. Learn these and revise them every day. Learn good introductory paragraphs for essays and good phrases to use repeatedly. You will pick up bits and pieces of grammar, but you probably won't know the actual rules.

You can't get out of using good Irish in the oral or hearing properly in the aural, however. Still, all that they examine is very personal and general (for the oral) and easy enough to pick up (for the listening).

Result (for me) is that I ended up with an A1, but I just don't know the language. I don't know much grammar and I certainly don't know every verb or tense. It's all a bit sad, really. I say you learn as much as you can and work to do well on the test, because the course just doesn't examine your ability in Irish at the moment, only your ability to twist the Irish you know to suit the questions you are being asked.

Go n-éirí leat!

spurious

The latest available Chief Examiner's report for Gaeilge (2008) mentions the problem of learned off answers not answering the question frequently.

Much better learn a few phrases that you understand and know how to use, or even to write simple sentences that you know are correct and on-topic.

An Fear Bocht

The big problem with learning off answers is that it proves that the student couldn't hack Irish in the first place. I know that Irish is generally taught dreadfully in this country but learning off answers reduces Irish to nothing more than a regurgitation contest that is enjoyed by neither the student nor the examiner. That's not to say that learning off is morally wrong or anything like that, just that it's a cop-out for actually learning to read and write Irish.

Think of it this way - when an examiner ges a set of scripts from your centre and reads a bunch of perfectly learned-off essays, he/she is not going to believe that you all wrote them from scratch. In truth, to really do well at Irish, you have to know what you're at and actually be able to do your own work. If all you do is memorise essays, you simply don't deserve a good grade in Irish. This isn't meant to sound harsh, there's simply a abysmal attitude among a certain section of Irish teachers that Irish is a subject to be learned off by heart.

lctake2

learn off if you understand what you're saying and are able to adapt it to the question. i got an a1 but my irish would never have been good enough to formulate all of my own answers. you won't often get to write out an entire learned off answer but will get to use phrases, paragraphs etc from a couple of answers and put them together to relate to the question

Indigo Sunrise

I got an A1 in Irish and I never learnt anything off, but then again I was in an Irish school. For the poetry, stories, etc, I just knew what they were about and then I was able to make up answers based on that. I also made up my essay on the day(it was also the first ever article I wrote).

Since your standard of Irish isn't that high I guess that won't be possible to do, but I think if you try and improve your basic Irish everything else will become easier for you. It's an Irish exam so obviously most of the marks go for...your Irish. I think it would be a good idea to put together some phrases and vocab that you can use for the different poems and stuff, and also for different essay topics(recession, education, etc.).

I think people invest a disproportionate amount of time in studying for paper 2, it's only about 25% of the total marks. I also think they'll be placing even less emphasis on paper 2 with the new syllabus.

Slightly off topic, but in English speaking schools do teachers and students actually speak Irish in Irish class? Seems like a no-brainer to me but I wouldn't be surprised if it wasn't the case.

Dafydd Thomas

I can't speak for Irish but for German I learned off so much stuff. Spent hours and hours every week. I regurgitated everything for the oral but barely put any of it down for the paper. Learning off all that stuff really improved my german and the structure of my sentences. Maybe if you could do it until the oral and see after that. I got an A2 in German. Irish is much more difficult with the poetry and everything. For English I learned off a full answer for poetry, when I looked at it the other day I got 100% in it. It depends on how good you are. I'm not great at English but I got an A2 because I learned so much stuff off.

JamesJB

An Fear Bocht wrote: »

The big problem with learning off answers is that it proves that the student couldn't hack Irish in the first place. I know that Irish is generally taught dreadfully in this country...

... If all you do is memorise essays, you simply don't deserve a good grade in Irish. This isn't meant to sound harsh, there's simply a abysmal attitude among a certain section of Irish teachers that Irish is a subject to be learned off by heart.

To be fair, even though you've acknowledged it, it's not even funny how poorly Irish is taught right from primary school. By the time you get to LC the teachers have to work with what they're given. We never even touched the grammar sections in our books because we simply did not have time. I therefore put all of my work into a huge collection of vocabulary and sort of picked up things regarding verbs, grammar, conditional etc. with time. Looking back, I honestly know little about the language. I would always find myself wondering about every rule or whether I needed certain tenses/seimhiús etc.

The result is that I could probably still sit down and write pages on poetry or An Triail. This year the An Triail question was actually really tough (imo, would people not agree?) so even if people are just learning phrases/vocab and studying towards the exam, they deserve their high grade if they can apply their knowledge to such a tough question!

I agree that just learning off means you deserve a bad grade, but honestly I regard this current generation (and anyone who will sit the LC or even the JC in the next while) as 'too late'. We're too late to actually learn Irish, and in a sense the system has already failed. I don't want to sound too political with that statement, but when our teachers (who have perfect grammar, let's say) are forced to get through 13 poems, a play, stair, practice essays, 5 stories and comprehensions, BEFORE they even think about the actual language, there is a problem...

Indigo Sunrise wrote: »

Slightly off topic, but in English speaking schools do teachers and students actually speak Irish in Irish class? Seems like a no-brainer to me but I wouldn't be surprised if it wasn't the case.

Not in my school, apart from when we were doing the oral work in 6th year. It's the same in many schools, I'm told.

Chuchoter

The thing is my Irish is actually quite good. I make sense, I can understand most things and I can hold a conversation in Irish well. My grammar is just kind of crap and my teachers when I ask them why what I wrote down was wrong its always been 'thats just the way it is', so I can't apply that mistake I made to other things. So then all across my essay its -2 -2 -2 -2, and by the end of that question you've lost 15 marks.

LadyGaga!

The best thing you can do is fully understand the poem/story and write out key phrases that you'll need regardless of the Q to fully express yourself. Learn those. Study a grammar book daily and it'll all pay off. Learn how to say things twice, very handy for the comprehensions.

johnmcdnl

Before My oral last year I did a mock oral with someone who does the oral exams and he gave me 135/150 and I made all of it up on the spot pretty much so I'm not half bad at Irish in fairness.... I'd also get 90% on of the orals and all that anytime we practiced them in class... I'd also pretty much ace the comprehensions most times and I think I got 66/70 in my mocks for the comprehensions.... but I was just way to lazy to learn stuff off and I made it all up on the day for both mocks and real thing... so in fairness my standard of Irish is pretty decent like.....

I got a C2 in both my mocks and LC....

How comes??? because you have to learn answers off for poetry and your essays

The examiners can tell if you learnt it off or if your making it all up and unfortunately they want you to learn it off basically.... I know it's a complete joke of a system that penalises anyone who tries to use their own Irish basically

You just have to learn answers off - simple as that... it doesn't really matter what the question is either - it's always the same answer after the introduction sentence and then the conclusion... it's always the same answer...

it's a complete joke I know - but unless you are basically fluent - and by fluent I mean fluent as in you could write government documents in Irish your gonna have to learn answers off...

the written sections aren't about content - it's about the grammar vocab etc etc - content is only a tiny percentage - if the answer is anyways half relevant with 100% perfect and amazing Irish you get the A - if it's average Irish with amazing in depth analysis of the poetry then you get a C...

they don't care what you write - as long as it's amazing quality Irish - and it has to be AMAZING - you can't bull**** it unless your amazing at Irish - and very very very very very very few people are that good... you might be good at Irish - but chances are your still gonna have to learn it off if you want the good marks...

spurious

You only have to look at some of the fora here, where people are trying to get into primary teaching with no (or very bad) Irish. These are the people who will be feeding children into the secondary system in a few years. Madness.

While acknowledging it was before the Ark, when I was at school (late 70s) our teacher in Irish spoke Irish constantly, explained in Irish, very rarely spoke English. We were lost for most of 1st year, but the light dawned about February of 2nd year. We never had to learn grammar off, we just knew what sounded right.

When I was entering the VEC system as a teacher, part of my job interview was in Irish, though it's not my subject and I had to sit an exam called the Ceard Teastas to get a full time job in a VEC school. Thanks to the grounding of that one fantastic teacher, I didn't have to study or learn off for either.

JamesJB

johnmcdnl wrote: »

they don't care what you write - as long as it's amazing quality Irish - and it has to be AMAZING - you can't bull**** it unless your amazing at Irish - and very very very very very very few people are that good... you might be good at Irish - but chances are your still gonna have to learn it off if you want the good marks...

This is probably correct. However, I still argue that you can write down and memorize key vocabulary and phrases for poetry, drama, essays and all such sections rather than full answers. Learning vocab is a big part of learning any language, but unfortunately at LC level it's pretty much the pith of the whole thing. Grammar doesn't even come into the equation most of the time and even though the orals and the aurals carry the most marks, they don't get as much time as they should due to the massive amount of material teachers must cover for paper 2.

An Fear Bocht

JamesJB wrote: »

To be fair, even though you've acknowledged it, it's not even funny how poorly Irish is taught right from primary school. By the time you get to LC the teachers have to work with what they're given. We never even touched the grammar sections in our books because we simply did not have time. I therefore put all of my work into a huge collection of vocabulary and sort of picked up things regarding verbs, grammar, conditional etc. with time. Looking back, I honestly know little about the language. I would always find myself wondering about every rule or whether I needed certain tenses/seimhiús etc.

The result is that I could probably still sit down and write pages on poetry or An Triail. This year the An Triail question was actually really tough (imo, would people not agree?) so even if people are just learning phrases/vocab and studying towards the exam, they deserve their high grade if they can apply their knowledge to such a tough question!

I agree that just learning off means you deserve a bad grade, but honestly I regard this current generation (and anyone who will sit the LC or even the JC in the next while) as 'too late'. We're too late to actually learn Irish, and in a sense the system has already failed. I don't want to sound too political with that statement, but when our teachers (who have perfect grammar, let's say) are forced to get through 13 poems, a play, stair, practice essays, 5 stories and comprehensions, BEFORE they even think about the actual language, there is a problem...

Ah, but here's the snag - if a person can apply their knowledge to a difficult question, that simply means that they understand the question and the relevant content to use. Give them a question for which they have no essay memorised and they become rather regrettably lost. That is the definition in acing a subject as opposed to the language itself - the paper becomes nothing more than a test of how well you know your learned-off essays, not an examination of how cogent your Irish is. If somebody is unable to compose an essay from scratch to the same meaning and overall impression as the one they memorised, then they simply don't merited a good grade. If we look at this even further, we will see that if someone actually can write essays well, then they're not really going to bother learning off essays in the first place.

The bottom line is this - people who learn off essays are not writing their own material. They're writing someone else's; and as we all know, two into one won't go. If your written paper is basically somebody else's work, then the grade you get is basically somebody else's grade. Bearing in mind that learned-off essays are generally used as a substitute for hard work, I cannot agree that anybody who learns off essays can possibly deserve a high grade. The only way to merit that high grade is to master the language; and unfortunately, that wasn't good enough in my Irish exam.

This of course leads me on johnmcdnl's post; unfortunately, he is quite correct over the department's lack of reward for people who actually try and write their own material. Spurious has already mentioned that the most recent chief examiners' reports mention learned-off material and the lack of engagement that results; I myself have read these reports (2005 and 2008) and I very much agree with the sentiment that students should be writing their own material. Unfortunately, the department seem to be having their cake and eating it in this respect. The only people I know who have got A1s in Irish were those who memorised essays.

As I alluded to earlier, I missed out (an A2 grade, pending rechecking because I don't believe the marking scheme was applied properly); much as I don't like to bring my own personal case into things, I think I can make a point with this: my approach for a long time now has been to appreciate everything about Irish, from the subtle grammatical structures to the carefully-phrased idioms and the literary texts where people write not for the sake of an exam during June, but for the sake of human expression.

Indeed, my Irish grew to the extent that it is now about as good as it will ever get, save were I to go and live in the Gaeltachts or take out my big Irish dictionary for a spot of daily reading. It was this that disappointed me most about getting an A2; I know I should be happy, it's just that there are people out their busting their guts to learn Irish properly, but they're getting drastically lower grades than people who simply memorise and adapt an essay. Sometimes I wonder where our education system is going. Still, that's not really my concern anymore because I'm going into college this year. By the way, this post isn't intended to be a tirade or a personal attack (or anything of the sort); I simply want to bring a few personal opinions to the table where undoubtedly the discussion has taken off.

JamesJB

An Fear Bocht wrote: »

Ah, but here's the snag - if a person can apply their knowledge to a difficult question, that simply means that they understand the question and the relevant content to use. Give them a question for which they have no essay memorised and they become rather regrettably lost.

The An Triail question had very little, if no reference material to which a learned off essay could be applied (bar an introductory sentence and possibly a conclusion). I studied vocabulary and individual phrases extensively, formulated a genuine opinion about what I thought the question asked (I wasn't 100% certain what it meant :pac:) and expressed it through the Irish I knew. I didn't 'learn off' anything, and the key phrases/sentences I learned came from taking good vocabulary and phrasing and restructuring it to articulate my own points.

If you want my opinion, I think this is a LOT more work than just learning off somebody else's work. It's not studying the language the way it should be, but as everybody knows such study simply isn't rewarded properly. I didn't go to a gaelscoil, never went to the Gaeltacht, and took no grinds. I just had a good, dedicated teacher who went through everything and did extra classes for oral work. I don't think I 'just' learned something off.

This isn't just meant to be me defending myself, but I shall continue...

If somebody is unable to compose an essay from scratch to the same meaning and overall impression as the one they memorised, then they simply don't merited a good grade.

I reckon that learning vocabulary and phrases rather than full essays merits a good grade. As for essays, I prepared certain topics in advance and made out (in English) exactly what I would like to say, then used as many sources as I could to get the right vocabulary with which to construct my answerr. I got lucky: an essay I composed on the Gaeltacht's revival for my school magazine basically came up in the debate. There's always luck involved!

I think I can make a point with this: my approach for a long time now has been to appreciate everything about Irish, from the subtle grammatical structures to the carefully-phrased idioms and the literary texts where people write not for the sake of an exam during June, but for the sake of human expression.

So you're saying that you genuinely appreciate Irish for what it is, and your learning of the idioms, studying of the texts etc. was out of genuine interest in the language. I respect that, but Irish is compulsory, and it's hard. Some people just want a good grade, and this leads to memorization. Plus, many people do subjects that they aren't particularly interested in. If they do all the same work that you mentioned, but only geared towards an exam, do they not deserve the same A2 you got or similar?

there are people out their busting their guts to learn Irish properly, but they're getting drastically lower grades than people who simply memorise and adapt an essay.

Well, if you ask me it's a big gamble to learn off an essay for paper one, since it might not come up in any form. As for these people busting their guts and getting lower grades, well think of it this way. To get my A1 I studied oral Irish for 15-20 minutes every day from September. I also listened to RnaG every day for 10-15 minutes, learned every new word I could learn, studied all the tips on essay writing and composing...That's before any learning of phrases came into play at all. Sure, there'd be an occasional paragraph that I'd just love to throw in everywhere I could, and the same introductions, but to say that I just learned things off is inaccurate. If you can't speak Irish well and steer that oral, pick up what's being said in the aural, and compose an interesting essay, then you will fall down. As was said, they're on the guard for obviously memorised material:

spurious wrote: »

The latest available Chief Examiner's report for Gaeilge (2008) mentions the problem of learned off answers not answering the question frequently.

Much better learn a few phrases that you understand and know how to use, or even to write simple sentences that you know are correct and on-topic.

I take this to mean that they don't like repetetive, obviously memorised material when compared to people who have sat down and studied vocabulary and simple phrases.

By the way, this post isn't intended to be a tirade or a personal attack (or anything of the sort); I simply want to bring a few personal opinions to the table where undoubtedly the discussion has taken off.

I take no offence to your points. If I had just learned it all off, I'd say that I honestly didn't deserve the grade. That's not what I did, however. While I don't know everything about grammar or the actual workings of the language (like you do) I was pretty good at Irish, and I worked very hard. Sure, I was just working to 'beat' the unfairly constructed exam they had set out for me, but in retrospect I liked learning the language and I am saddened by how poorly it was presented to me all through my public education. I wish it was taught like French.

Good luck with your recheck btw :cool:

Chuchoter

While 'you don't deserve the mark' and 'love the language' is all well and good, and I do really like Irish and would love to be good at Irish, but I can't do it in the current system. Its unfairly skewed towards the gaelscoils and gaeltachts and is corrected and taught in a way that those of us who went to English speaking primary schools, with teachers with poor Irish and can't afford to go to Gaeltachts every year don't have a chance at the A1. Its great that something 'merits' the mark, doesn't mean your getting it. About 20% of your written paper is content so learning phrases and vocab won't get me as far as I need it to, the other 80% is spelling and grammar.

So the question is not do I deserve the mark but will I get the mark. They're are so many girls in my year that I'm sure I have better Irish than (in terms of actual usable Irish, like conversation) who just rote learn things who did way better than me in the JC and other tests. I know they don't deserve the mark, but they still get it.

dambarude

If you can compose your own essays the advantages are twofold:

1.) No matter how difficult or different the question is, you'll be able to draft something together to answer it. The people who learn material by heart won't know what to do. I heard of a girl who paid thousands to go to a grinds school, and needed a C3 to do primary teaching, who had to leave the Irish paper 1 exam after 45 mins because she couldn't answer any of the essay questions. The reason: she hadn't got any notes on those essays so 'couldn't' answer any of them.

2.) Your answer will be different. Even if it is simple, it won't be the same as the dribble from a revision book that the examiner will have to read hundreds of times over when correcting. It is much more likely that you will be able to directly answer the question, rather than dance around it, hoping that your 'learned off' piece will address the question in one way or another.

The 2010 exams deviated slightly from the usual predictions and types of questions in many subjects, and exams will continue to move in that direction.

JamesJB

dambarude wrote: »

If you can compose your own essays the advantages are twofold:

1.) No matter how difficult or different the question is, you'll be able to draft something together to answer it. The people who learn material by heart won't know what to do. I heard of a girl who paid thousands to go to a grinds school, and needed a C3 to do primary teaching, who had to leave the Irish paper 1 exam after 45 mins because she couldn't answer any of the essay questions. The reason: she hadn't got any notes on those essays so 'couldn't' answer any of them.

2.) Your answer will be different. Even if it is simple, it won't be the same as the dribble from a revision book that the examiner will have to read hundreds of times over when correcting. It is much more likely that you will be able to directly answer the question, rather than dance around it, hoping that your 'learned off' piece will address the question in one way or another.

The 2010 exams deviated slightly from the usual predictions and types of questions in many subjects, and exams will continue to move in that direction.

This is all true...and now that I think about it, people getting A1s just by learning stuff off...how exactly does it work without incredible amounts of luck? I can understand it for poetry, but this year's An Triail? The essays? All were quite different and difficult enough to boot.

dambarude

JamesJB wrote: »

This is all true...and now that I think about it, people getting A1s just by learning stuff off...how exactly does it work without incredible amounts of luck? I can understand it for poetry, but this year's An Triail? The essays? All were quite different and difficult enough to boot.

Good luck can go a long way when employing regurgitation strategies, but you can get very badly scorched if it doesn't go to plan.

PARARORY

Irish is the only subject where I would advise anyone to learn stuff off - unless your grammar is perfect.

Look at it like this - in an english exam you can (hopefully!) make up something on the spot and not have to worry about loads of spelling mistakes.

Irish is a completely different story - unless you have perfect grammar and a good vocabularly you will struggle to get a good grade.

Learn of phrases. I learnt off say a few phrases/paragraphs on Head Shops , Drugs , Drink , Violence , Environment.

Pick a topic a week and learn off phrases/paragraphs - go over every night and within a few weeks you should be able to write out a whole essay from memory - mixing and matching the different parts from each topic!

An Fear Bocht

JamesJB,

It sounds very much as if you have a good grasp of Irish; learning vocabulary and phrases is all part of the game. If you know the vocabulary, then you know what it means - phrases, meanwhile, must be understood, but it's still part of learning. I wouldn't take fault with that approach, because vocabulary and phrases are simply base ingredients from which you write your essays; as long as the phrases are understood and they aren't repeated over and over again, then I would very much say that that's a good angle to approach it from.

This year's Irish paper was certainly quite quirky. I know that the An Triail question was very ambiguously phrased (our school studied A Thig Ná Tit Orm, so I didn't read the An Triail question until later), but either of the questions could have been answered by reams of learned-off material as long as the student knows what the question means. Granted, the An Triail question on the vices of humanity was a little unfair, but if someone is able to understand that question, the chances are that they're quite competent at Irish in the first place. I'd speculate that a lot of the answers involved guesswork due to the murky phrasing.

Doubtlessly, there are people who simply want the grade; the Irish exam isn't about who is more enthusiastic, it's about evaluating the student's ability to communicate in Irish. If someone simply wants the grade, then they ought to build up their Irish to attain that grade. I know that my approach was to develop my Irish and really get into the spirit of it, but that in itself is not the merit I'm claiming, it simply helps in reaching the ability necessary for an A1 grade. It should in theory come down to one's actual prowess in Irish. Unfortunately, I have not found any evidence to suggest that this is the case in practice.

As an aside, I don't actually band your approach as "learning-off". As I've said earlier, you seem to have put a fair bit of effort into developing your Irish to the extent that you can write your own material. There's always going to be stuff to learn in a language; the problem is that people don't learn when they memorise an essay, they just commit a sequence of words to memory. That's the danger - if they're not thinking for themselves, then their prowess is rather regrettably non-existent. The unfortunate status quo is that it is possible to get an A1 in Leaving Cert Irish with a mediocre grasp of the language, yet reams of essays learned-off. It may seem extreme that I'm even saying this, but it's not even funny how much of a joke the Leaving Cert is. I've always thought that the syllabi were a bit misguided, but the way the exams are corrected involves an insane amount of luck. I have plenty of anecdotal evidence of this, as well as a bit of concrete evidence (though I can't say I've particularly decided to pursue the matter - I'd much rather proceed with colllege). Thanks for wishing me luck, I'm hoping that it goes well.

crayolastereo,

I agree, the system is very unfair; unfortunately, it is also inconsistent and inaccurately reflective of actual ability. Of course, the question of what grade one deserves very rarely enters into the equation, mainly because the exam is very limited in terms of its actual assessment of Irish. However, I would rather the department at least marked their papers consistently; they don't even give a list of possible points for the essays in paper two, nor do they have exemplar material in the chief examiner's reports, so it's impossible to even know what these examiners are looking for in the first place.

JamesJB

An Fear Bocht wrote: »

JamesJB,

It sounds very much as if you have a good grasp of Irish

Thankee :cool: However I confess that my grasp is limited, mostly in a grammar sense. The main reason for this is that grammar just isn't examined, nor is it really taught properly. I suspect that Primary school made me dislike Irish, and the JC made me indifferent to it. By the LC I really wanted to do well in it, not for patriotism, but because I thought it would be nice to learn that and French. Two weeks into 5th year, I knew that Irish was no language class.

as long as the phrases are understood and they aren't repeated over and over again, then I would very much say that that's a good angle to approach it from.

Most of my phrases were understood, but used repeatedly nonetheless. I would construct them from sources and use certain words specifically to impress an examiner. For instance, in my essay on 'meath na Gaeltachtaí' I had a phrase about how the EU have Aistriúchán Comhuaineacha (sp?), something that shows great respect for the aul Gaeilge. I constructed this phrase by taking the words for 'simultaneous translation' and putting them into a 'bread and butter' EU sentence: 'Sa pharlaimint, bíonn aistriúchán comhuaineacha ar siúil mar tá cead ag na feisirí eorpacha Gaeilge a labhairt má bhíonn an cumas acu'.

Obviously I'm already rusty, but my reasoning was as follows: having taken the time to make a similar sentence to this (based on my actual opinion as I would articulate it in English) I was damn sure to make that point in an essay about the EU, about the state of Irish, about the importance of Irish... I reused it because it was so familiar to me and relevant to many topics.

I know that the An Triail question was very ambiguously phrased but either of the questions could have been answered by reams of learned-off material as long as the student knows what the question means.

I'd love to know how I actually did on it...I didn't fully know what it meant and basically relied on making the same points you usually make for An Triail and trying to twist them to suit. I only hope that it looked like I understood it confidently. Plus, if someone is just learning stuff off, the chances of them understanding the question are going to be fairly slim compared to someone who studies the langauge in earnest, no? (Not in all cases)

As an aside, I don't actually band your approach as "learning-off". As I've said earlier, you seem to have put a fair bit of effort into developing your Irish to the extent that you can write your own material. There's always going to be stuff to learn in a language; the problem is that people don't learn when they memorise an essay, they just commit a sequence of words to memory.

I suppose I personally feel that I just studied for a test instead of studied a language, even though that was what I wanted to do. It's not 'learning off', but it's also not 'learning Irish '

And yes, people don't learn anything from memorisation. However, some things are just so flexible and reusable that they just resurface everywhere. Introductions to debates (arguably would be the same even in English), a specific method to open/close your answers, complex sentences you make up solely as a way of 'flaunting' what you know...There was a lot of repetition, but never a full essay memorised. What I did do, however, is learn the points I'd actually like to make in English. Sometimes you just don't realise how much you can say, and so by learning that you can then apply your Irish in order to articulate yourself.

the way the exams are corrected involves an insane amount of luck. I have plenty of anecdotal evidence of this, as well as a bit of concrete evidence...Thanks for wishing me luck, I'm hoping that it goes well.

Always luck involved; Always. We've all heard quasi-horror stories about such things. If you're that passionate about Irish, I say pursue it to the full. Even if you want to move on and go to college, it's really a matter of principle at this stage :cool:.