help with leaving cert honours irish

rhiannon red

i am currently doing honours irish in 5th year and i find it very HARD!!!!! does anyone have any advice as to how to improve????? i find the aural side of the course quite difficult and my sentence structure and vocabulary in genral is....meh. i did t.y. last year which probably wasn't a help!!!! so anyway, is there perhaps a series of books i could read, programmes i could watch on t.v. or listen to on the radio or even things on the internet to help me up my game. i've tried reading books in irhs before but genreally i can't get past the first paragraph with a good understanding of what is going on in the piece. obviously, i'll be focusing on my other six subjects as well and i also do music outside of school but a every little helps so any advice would be greatly appreciated.

clay95

Hi im in 6th year honours irish and in fifth year especailly at the start found irish very difficult watching irish programs on tg4 is supposed to be brilliant for improving irish. I did lots of reading comprehensions and looked up all the words I didn't know to improve my vocab. Stick with it, it gets easier!

Days 298

Early days in 5ft year. Keep at it, the aural vocab will come in time. Dropping wont make it easier! Ordinary level students are marked the same as higher level in the auraloral:o! :mad:

SeaDaily

Days 298 wrote: »

Ordinary level students are marked the same as higher level in the aural! :mad:

Don't understand what you mean by this considering there are different questions for ordinary and higher level orals..

Days 298

SeaDaily wrote: »

Don't understand what you mean by this considering there are different questions for ordinary and higher level orals..

What different questions? Ive had two different teachers both of whom have told us the aural examiner wont know if you are doing higher or lower.

EDIT:Feck my bad!:P
Thinking quicker than I am reading

SeaDaily

Days 298 wrote: »

What different questions? Ive had two different teachers both of whom have told us the aural examiner wont know if you are doing higher or lower.

EDIT:Feck my bad!:P
Thinking quicker than I am reading

I'm confused now, I meant to say aurals in my post...

Days 298

SeaDaily wrote: »

I'm confused now, I meant to say aurals in my post...

Aurals: Same tape easier questions for ordinary level
Orals: No distinction between HL and OL students

SeaDaily

Days 298 wrote: »

Aurals: Same tape easier questions for ordanary level
Orals: No distinction between HL and OL students

Haha yep that's it!

speechless

http://www.rrr.ie/ and http://www.raidionalife.ie/ are great

you can listen online
Last year they had podcasts on the oral and also the poets http://raidionalife.ie/gaeilge-na-hardteistimeireachta-2013/?lang=en

They will probably do the same again this year. It takes time to tune your ear in to the Irish, but for the aural you need to make time to listen to some Irish every day, even ten mins in the morning listening to the news on Raidió na Gaeltachta, At the beginning you will understand very little, but if you can pick out a few words, and then write down one or two that seem to repeat so it could be "cinnlínte" for example, or what you think the word sounds like, look it up in a dictionary or ask someone or ask your teacher.

Gradually you will build up your vocabulary and your ear.

The aural is really a test of how much Irish you know first in terms of verbs and grammar and vocabulary and then how much you can recognise from the pronunciation. The more you listen to, the better you will be able to recognise it. Go n-éirí leat, coinnigh do mhisneach

A97

Interestingly enough, I was thinking about this. I've been listening to Raidió Rí-Rá recently. The language is pretty simple and I can understand it mostly but at the same time, there isn't a lot of Irish spoken on it considering the English language songs. Would anybody here have a particular preference for any station?

Sorry to derail, but I'd ask a similar question for the other languages. I do Spanish and I'd love a good recommendation. To avoid derailing, you could PM me about this.

Jinx96

I'm in the same boat, I'm terrible at languages got a C in the Junior cert in irish with an exceptional teacher, I did **** all study for most of my junior anyway but I'm currently in 5th year with an Irish teacher which I have learnt nothing from! Im highly considering dropping to pass even at this point as the work load for honours is seems too much!
Anyone in 6th year or done the leaving know the key things to study for irish that I could even get a d1 or d2 with? And what would the likelihood of getting a b1 or a2 in pass be with considerable amount of study?
The exceptional teacher I had I junior cert is for some reason teaching the pass class so I'm very tempted to go to that rather than fail honour with this dope I have now!

student111

I am by no means a natural at Irish, in fact I struggle with it! What I have to do is just sit down and learn, learn, learn but it pays off! Do LOADS of oral practice, that's a great way to boost your marks. You can almost predict the essay/short story question... stay away from short stories! Learn off essays that interlink There is also no reason why you can't learn all the set poetry and pros. Comprehensions improve with plenty of practice and listening to hard tape/ Irish radio and TG4 is great for aural practice Stick at it and don't give up just yet! Good luck with everything