Leaving Cert Marking Papers

KittyCat12345

I was just wondering, if two people, siblings, had pretty much identical essays for the English composition would they be marked down because of it.
Surely that would not be just seeing as the private schools give out essays to their students to learn off all the time, and it wouldn't be 30 students writing pretty much the same thing. It would only be 2 students.
Any help appreciated!!

Ayrtonf7

1) Ive heard people who learn off essays do poor when it comes to english. The english course is aimed at expressing your own oppionion about matters and this is what good grades are given for. I think examiners would be fairly capable of being able to pick out an "off by heart" essay as well.

2) If your from the same class it would probably be investigated. For an outside examiner it would look as if the two students were cheating, especially if they were identical.

My advice, stay clear from it.

KittyCat12345

That's quite interesting but is it not a bit unfair that the private schools are allowed do this without anyone batting an eyelid? Is there really anything to stop students from doing this?

spurious

KittyCat12345 wrote: »

That's quite interesting but is it not a bit unfair that the private schools are allowed do this without anyone batting an eyelid? Is there really anything to stop students from doing this?

Eyelids are batted - quite vigorously.
The SEC Chief Examiners' Reports mention learned off answers and other poor quality answers quite frequently. Only a very foolish person would not think they will do something about predictability of questions. Will it be this year? Who knows?

what.to.do

My english teacher marked the honours paper last year, and he's been telling us the odd things that happen with the marking system.

The answer is no, you will not get docked for the same essay. But the essays are getting harder and harder to "pre-prepare", and if you can apply them correctly to the question - well brilliant for you. But the majority of candidates do very poorly this way, since most of them cannot apply the question correctly to the essay!

Just practise your writing rather than learning off chunks of it.

nommm

As the person above me said, the reason most people do badly in pre-learned answers is because they don't adapt the answers to suit the questions. Plus they are making it harder every year to learn off your answers.

implausible

KittyCat12345 wrote: »

I was just wondering, if two people, siblings, had pretty much identical essays for the English composition would they be marked down because of it.

No.

They would be marked down however, for not sticking to the title....and every year the paper is getting less and less conducive to learned-off answers as the titles are getting very specific e.g. in the 2009 paper students were asked to write a short story in which a photograph played a part in the plot; a lot of students, who threw down their learned-off short story onto the page with a brief reference to a photo, lost a full grade on that paper.

ride-the-spiral

One of our teachers was correcting and found an essay which he had written. Needless to say that was marked down.

implausible

ride-the-spiral wrote: »

One of our teachers was correcting and found an essay which he had written. Needless to say that was marked down.

It would only be marked down if it didn't address the title and under C,L and M for the rest. We are told to mark each essay on its own merits.