Repeating HL Irish part-time.

Bumblebee Man

Hopefully this is in the right forum.

My girlfriend is a qualified nurse but wants to do primary school teaching. She doesn't have the required results in leaving cert irish to enter any of the courses.

Her plan would be to sit the leaving certificate irish exam next year (2015) and start a primary teaching course then.

Where would people recommend? She would be looking to do it part-time in the evenings while continuing to work.
She has looked into the Institute of Education/Ashfield college and also places like Crumlin College.

One problem she may have is that she'll be away for the month of October.

Would obtaining a c3 in the course be manageable?

I also read somewhere that certain universities offer diplomas in irish which satisfy the irish requirement for primary teaching courses.

Any information would be greatly appreciated.

spurious

Plunket College has a good night HL Irish course.

paperclip2

The TEG leibheal B2 from NUI Maynooth is also accepted as meeting the Irish requirement for Primary teaching. It can be hard to get courses though: http://www.teg.ie/english/about_teg.htm

A University First Arts Examination in Irish will be accepted in lieu of the Leaving Certificate Examination. In addition the Dioplóma sa Gaeilge from NUI Maynooth, the Diploma in Arts (Applied Irish) from University College Cork, the Dioplóma sa Ghaeilge Fheidhmeach from UCD, and the Dioplóma sa Ghaeilge, NUIG are accepted as meeting the Irish requirement.

mr jack

I’ve just copied this from another post I made but I was in the same position as your gf last year, did leaving cert in 02 and repeated last year to try and get C in Honours. I'm based in Dublin and looked at repeating through various options - Crumlin VEC on Saturdays, online with Kilroys online or Monday evenings in Plunket College in Whitehall. I went with the latter and think it worked out the finest.

Didn't go with Crumlin because you'd never know what was happening on any given Saturday and knew I'd miss loads of classes and avoided Kilroys because I knew I wouldn't be disciplined enough to do the work. And from what I've heard from a friend, she did it with Kilroys and said it didn't work for her at all and ended up forking out a load of money on grinds.

Plunket's was def. good if not great. Classes only started in Oct and it cost around €300. The first night the class was packed, near 40 students but this dwindled fairly rapidly to around 20 as I think people thought they couldn't handle it.

I think if you have a decent grasp of basic Irish at all you'll fly it. The course is def. a lot more manageable and dare I say a hell of a lot easier than what the honours students did 10 years ago. You have 50% complete before you put pen to paper, 40% - oral, and 10% - listening. I really concentrated on the oral and it went well. Prepare 3 good essays and you're sorted. I also did my exams in a local school that wouldn't excel in grades so hoping the bell curve will help me. I could've repeated with my classmates but then I wouldn't def. get the questions I prepared about why someone who was 30+ was repeating the leaving cert and wouldn't stand out as much.

Plunket's - I'd give it a good review. The teacher was a lad called<name snipped for privacy> and the thing was to get noticed by him so he'd know your name and ask you questions as gaeilge in class. This was the best way of practicing your spoken Irish. Some people never wanted to be asked anything and when they did they could hardly speak a word. We got given homework as well which I did at the start but then I got lazy and stopped doing it. He also gave predictions at the end of the course which worked out perfectly.

All in all go for it. I was bricking it beforehand but even though I haven't got my results yet I'm hoping for a B. I didn't really do much on the poetry, drama or pros as there is so little marks for the amount of work you have to do, but my predictions came out well so I was lucky.

Add on - I ended up getting a C1 which I was happy out with, and I honestly did feckall work on the written paper. If you study smartly it's so doable. Put the work in where the marks are, oral, listening, comprehension and the essay. V little marks for prose, poetry and drama and not worth killing yourself over. If you prepare 3 essays you'll fly it. I only prepared one but I was lucky it came up, I was so short on time I couldn't prepare any more than that.
I know a girl who's useless at Irish and she got a B3 just by learning answers off, but that's not ideal really.
See if there's any ciorcal comhras local and join them, you need to be speaking the language, you'll not improve but just learning it out of the book. Listen to Radio na Life and watch Ros na Run and the news on TG4 to improve your listening. I tried the CD's but got bored of them v quickly.

I worked full time so used to get up an hour earlier before work to do study/homework as couldn't do a tap in the evening. In short, def. doable

JohnMearsheimer

I also did my LC in 2002 and I repeated Irish this year. I was working full time while doing it and found it ok enough but if your girlfriend does shift work that nurses tend to do then it might be more difficult for her.

A girl in my class started the Kilroys distance thing. She abandoned it and didn't have great things to say about it. I went to a class based repeat course. That was in Cork so I can't really recommend a place in Dublin. If your girlfriend has been away from the language for a few years it's definitely a better option to go with a teacher/classroom environment.

Doing well in the oral is very important. It's worth 40% these days. I did conversational Irish classes one evening a week in UCC and found them very useful. By the time the oral rolled around I was comfortable enough being spoken to in Irish. I'd imagine UCD, DCU or Trinity would run similar conversational Irish classes. You also have to read poetry aloud (it's fairly easy and there's Youtube videos of them being read so you can listen to them as much as you want before the exam) and go through a sraith pictiúr. A sraith pictiúr is just a series of images describing an event. There are 20 different scenarios (each with 6 pictures) and you'll get asked about one of the scenarios at random. At honours level you are looking at 4 to 6 lines per picture, so about 24 to 36 lines to complete your sraith pictiúr. It's not as bad as it sounds, it's grand.

The listening is worth 10% and if you practice a bit there should be no problem hoovering up a good chunk of that 10%. Between the oral and the listening that's half of the marks accounted for before you even open paper 1 and paper 2.

Paper 1 is worth about 17% These days it comprises of just the essay. The essay topics are usually about social problems, problems facing the youth of today etc. Generally the topics are broad. We got essays as homework and you can build up a bank of them after a while. There is also loads of time to write the essay as well.

Paper 2 is worth 33% overall but it is intensive work wise. In paper 2 you have your comprehensions (you have to do 2), poetry, short stories and novel. The 2 comprehensions alone account for half the marks available (16.5%) in paper 2. The killer of paper 2 is that the short stories (5%), poetry (5%) and novel (6.5%) account for 16.5% of the overall marks available but you spend a disproportionate amount of your time preparing for those questions that aren't really worth a whole lot.

I took a week off work the week before the leaving cert Irish paper to study for paper 1 and 2. Most of my time was spent studying the novel, poetry and short stories. I put in a lot of hours study that week but it was fine in the end. I ended up with a B2.

Your girlfriend keeping her motivation will be important if she does it. We lost a few people along the way. Facing into writing an Irish essay on the health system or the state of the economy after a day at work is not fun. If she wants it enough she'll get through it. Overall, it's doable.