HL Irish Paper 1 essays

BrownBear11

Although there's different threads on Irish around this forum I thought the essays needed their own thread cos' they're pretty important

Just looking for general advice on the essay section of the paper overall and if anyone is able to help me these questions in particular that would be great

Would I better to use more basic grammar and make sure there's no mistakes or try to include things like Modh Coinníollach and An Saor Briathar? Which would an examiner be more inclined to mark highly? I've been told that students have full marks at the beginning and can only lose them throughout the exam (if that makes sense ) but surely not straying from using the basic tenses wouldn't get you full marks for the grammar, right?

Also, aside from the introduction and conclusion how many points generally would be needed for an A1 standard essay?

I've heard and read in different places that the Diospoireacht is marked easier than the Aiste so does anyone think would I be better off focusing on those for the year?

Oh and any resources for good phrases would be greatly appreciated... Aside form the usual "Ní mór don Rialtas rud eigin a dhéanamh", etc. Something to make it stand out!


Any other tips/advice for A1 preparation would be brilliant... Thanks very much in advance everyone Appreciated!

Canard

My plan this year was to do the essay - my teacher had said we'd do the others as practice but we never did! So I don't really know how to say if one is marked easier than the other, but the one I did was option C I think. In my mock I did an essay from part A and got 96/100 and as it happens I actually got 96/100 in the real thing while doing part C so take from that what you will. :pac:

I didn't use "basic" grammar but I wrote 5 pages because there was plenty of time. I just made everyday points (it was a pretty easy title about young people being lazy and you arguing against it), I used the conditional though and probably the briathar saor, I just don't remember actively doing it. The key thing is to fluently get your point across and show that you can do it beyond the bare minimum of 500-600 in my opinion.

If you use VERY basic stuff, you won't get 80/80. Even with what I wrote, I "only" got 76/80. It's also not just grammar, it's language too - idioms, seanfhocail etc are important and appropriate, relevant vocabulary.

My favourite phrase to use was this. "Glacann gach dath dubh ach ní ghlacann dath dubh dath ar bith!" - it means any colour takes black but black takes no other colour, in other words be optimistic because being pessimistic will get you nowhere. Very good for the conclusion of anything really. :P

Hope that helps!

CookieMonster.x

BrownBear11 wrote: »

Although there's different threads on Irish around this forum I thought the essays needed their own thread cos' they're pretty important

Just looking for general advice on the essay section of the paper overall and if anyone is able to help me these questions in particular that would be great

Would I better to use more basic grammar and make sure there's no mistakes or try to include things like Modh Coinníollach and An Saor Briathar? Which would an examiner be more inclined to mark highly? I've been told that students have full marks at the beginning and can only lose them throughout the exam (if that makes sense ) but surely not straying from using the basic tenses wouldn't get you full marks for the grammar, right?

Also, aside from the introduction and conclusion how many points generally would be needed for an A1 standard essay?

I've heard and read in different places that the Diospoireacht is marked easier than the Aiste so does anyone think would I be better off focusing on those for the year?

Oh and any resources for good phrases would be greatly appreciated... Aside form the usual "Ní mór don Rialtas rud eigin a dhéanamh", etc. Something to make it stand out!


Any other tips/advice for A1 preparation would be brilliant... Thanks very much in advance everyone Appreciated!

I usually write more than 1000 words for an essay. Using a bit more complicated grammar like MC and briathar saor will increase your marks. Examiners love the briathar saor! Try to incorporate it naturally but don't use it if you are not 100% sure it's right. You need to have the opening, closing, a few points and a solution to the problem. I'm not sure if the diospoireachts are marked easier but I'm pretty sure you get marks for the debate phrases and referring to the audience which is quite easy. Make sure you know basic grammar like tenses, urus, seimhius etc.

BrownBear11

Cheers for that guys Really helpful!

Anyone else with any tips keep 'em coming

BrownBear11

An over-asked question I know, but can an essay be too long?

ray2012

BrownBear11 wrote: »

An over-asked question I know, but can an essay be too long?

No, I don't think so. But the more you write and the longer the essay, the more chance you have of making extra mistakes.

Prodigious

Here's my advice. Write a high standard story in English. Very detailed, lots of descriptions etc. Make sure it would be suitable for several themes (happiness, anger, friendship, hope, etc). Translate it to Irish. Get your teacher to read it and make sure it's correct. Learn it off and write it on the day. Guaranteed a good grade. The correctors are told: If it can be relevant, it is relevant. Therefore it can be linked only very loosely with the title.

Canard

BrownBear11 wrote: »

An over-asked question I know, but can an essay be too long?

ray2012 wrote: »

No, I don't think so. But the more you write and the longer the essay, the more chance you have of making extra mistakes.

Not blowing my own horn, just making the point to disprove that idea once and for all - I wrote a 5 page essay on the spot. I got 96/100. I was surprised I made so few mistakes to be perfectly honest, but yeah, if your Irish is good enough and/or if you know enough phrases to get you by you'll be fine! I didn't feel too comfortable with learning them off or with leaving them so short and it paid off.

edit: I didn't even realize I'd posted that before in this exact thread hahaha, oops, I'm allowed to be stupid at 2am.

Dropping No Eaves

5 pages? For the mocks, I only wrote 3 and a half because I was worried they would dock marks for going on too long. Somebody told me that if you go too far over the 600 words they could penalise you. I didn't even check on the day actually, I just assumed he was telling the truth and kept it kind of short.

ray2012

Methememb wrote: »

Here's my advice. Write a high standard story in English. Very detailed, lots of descriptions etc. Make sure it would be suitable for several themes (happiness, anger, friendship, hope, etc). Translate it to Irish. Get your teacher to read it and make sure it's correct. Learn it off and write it on the day. Guaranteed a good grade. The correctors are told: If it can be relevant, it is relevant. Therefore it can be linked only very loosely with the title.

I wouldn't agree with this 'ar chor ar bith' ! :P
Just say you fully prepare and memorise an answer off hoping that a theme will come up that you can use your answer in. What if what you wanted doesn't come up? You would have spent all your time on that answer, just learning it off and not learning grammar/vocab for other topics and you'll find yourself fairly fecked.

My advice would be just to know your grammar inside out. Have vocabulary on topics that make a regular appearance (Government, Young people, Country problems, etc). Know a few idioms/seanfhocails that you can put into any essay/debate or whatever you do. It'll make it far easier on you just to know those, and pretty much make up an essay on the spot. You may have done the essay you choose in the LC before in class so you could use the ideas you once had.

I just don't like the idea of copy & paste answers. At all. :pac:

Prodigious

I don't agree with the principle behind them either, but they work. I'm prepared to do it for the result.

kingcobra

ray2012 wrote: »

I wouldn't agree with this 'ar chor ar bith' ! :P
Just say you fully prepare and memorise an answer off hoping that a theme will come up that you can use your answer in. What if what you wanted doesn't come up? You would have spent all your time on that answer, just learning it off and not learning grammar/vocab for other topics and you'll find yourself fairly fecked.

My advice would be just to know your grammar inside out. Have vocabulary on topics that make a regular appearance (Government, Young people, Country problems, etc). Know a few idioms/seanfhocails that you can put into any essay/debate or whatever you do. It'll make it far easier on you just to know those, and pretty much make up an essay on the spot. You may have done the essay you choose in the LC before in class so you could use the ideas you once had.

I just don't like the idea of copy & paste answers. At all. :pac:

This is exactly what I do and it's working great. I think it saves time and you get better results than those who memorise a whole essay, I feel sympathy for some of my classmates who are breaking their a** trying to learn an essay :rolleyes:

Although in the end, that's what suits me, or maybe I'm oblivious to the advantages of learning out a whole essay :P

Canard

Learning off answers is an awful idea, you can get 100/100 in your essay if you learn it off and get lucky but in that time you could have just learned the actual language...there are 500 more marks to make up. The essay's only 16%.

Dropping No Eaves wrote: »

5 pages? For the mocks, I only wrote 3 and a half because I was worried they would dock marks for going on too long. Somebody told me that if you go too far over the 600 words they could penalise you. I didn't even check on the day actually, I just assumed he was telling the truth and kept it kind of short.

Thats my point, it doesn't say that anywhere. They can penalise you if you write 600 perfect words of Irish and THEN you make awful mistakes, but if you keep it consistent it's fine. It was probably closer to 5 and a half to be honest, ~1100 words if I remember correctly. Of course you don't have to, and it is quality over quantity, but sure you've so much time in that exam that you might as well. Oh, and I didn't do the actual essay question (none of my learned ones came up and I had no idea what to write), it was actually the C part thing, I don't even know what the title word means because I'd never looked at it before then. Óraid or something.

Dropping No Eaves

Jaysus, fierce play as they say.

How exactly did you go about learning the language? I do love Irish, but my method has been learning certain phrases. Not just learning words without knowing what they mean, but learning the structure of different sentences and then applying them to essays, mixed with my own Gaelige. I'd like to get better at it, for my own personal interest and as it seems much easier. I've been going over tenses and whatnot, but if you could offer any advice that'd be great.

Canard

Dropping No Eaves wrote: »

Jaysus, fierce play as they say.

How exactly did you go about learning the language? I do love Irish, but my method has been learning certain phrases. Not just learning words without knowing what they mean, but learning the structure of different sentences and then applying them to essays, mixed with my own Gaelige. I'd like to get better at it, for my own personal interest and as it seems much easier. I've been going over tenses and whatnot, but if you could offer any advice that'd be great.

Thanks :P

Well honestly I didn't specifically sit down to do it, I think I kind of did just remember a lot of phrases like you're saying. It's no harm once you can work with them. Out of curiosity in the summer I looked up what the 5th case was in Irish and found a site explaining the 5 cases and a lot of other stuff - but I should also mention my teacher was great and actually did the cases with us, otherwise I wouldn't have known there were any. You might be aware, but they're a lot of the reason why you have to add H's into words "randomly", so if you learn the prepositions etc which make the case which adds the H, you wont have trouble with it again.

http://www.nualeargais.ie/gnag/subst2.htm This is the page I found, but of course there appears to be more on the site. It's a bit confusing if you have no experience with German (because it compares it to German a lot for some reason) but this is the kind of thing thats handy:
"It (the dative case) is used as the indirect object after most simple prepositions:
a, ag, ar, as, chuig, de, do, faoi, go, i, ionsar, le, ó, os, roimh, thar, trí, um (and in the plural after idir)"

That's also got way more detail than you'd probably need. Maybe the best thing to do is just get a good grammar book. :P As for the genetive case (that's the one like scoil -> scoile), I personally never really got my head around it completely using the notes we had, so a good idea there might be to learn off the genetive form of nouns that might require being written in it (usually it's the plural and singular reversed with a slight change, e.g. bean -> mná; mná -> mban). And tenses of course, but they're more straightforward and you've said you're looking at them anyway. Don't forget the conditional. :D

Hope that helped a bit and sorry for the length of the post, but hopefully I got my point across. :P

BrownBear11

Thanks for all the replies lads

And Patchy that's an excellent help, much obliged Thanks a million!

yournerd

I had irish paper 1 and people were going onto a 2nd booklet and then counting all the words oh god...