JC Oral Irish Exam...

pandoraj09

Just wondering...do many of you do the JC Oral exam with your students? I know inspectors recommend it and the written course is very tedious, especially for OL....

Boober Fraggle

I think it has become quite popular in recent years. It's a great preparation for the leaving cert oral, and makes the junior course more interesting. A lot of the material helps with the ordinary written course too. The sraith pictiur helps with the alt, and the rolghlacadh really helps them with the fograí.

gaeilgebeo

We started it our school two years ago after much reluctance.
It was the best decision we ever made as a department.
I would really recommend it and I definitely feel it has improved results.

mick kk

Did it last year for first time.
I had two students with dyslexia whose written Irish was terrible, but who were excellent at oral Irish. Normally they would be gone to ord level within a fortnight, but thanks to the oral they hung in there, focused on their oral exam, listening exam and their scéal and both got C grades last Wednesday and are going to attempt higher level for the leaving cert
I cannot recommend this enough. It has made irish class so much more positive and opened up a range of opportunities for enjoying the subject instead of focusing on the textbook. The ten questions for the rólghlacadh are almost the same for all of the rólghlacadh and the sraithpics are basically the same as the scéal questions. After 11 years of learning Irish, if they cannot have a conversation at this stage then we have to ask what is the point!!

You also don't have to leave it till 3rd year to start preparing. I have already started with my first years this year.

As regards the union, we are instructed not to examine our own students and I do agree with that. We hired a teacher from another school who did the assessment to get around this problem

They all get a mock oral before the real exam and management covered classes to enable us to do this.

dory

pandoraj09 wrote: »

Just wondering...do many of you do the JC Oral exam with your students? I know inspectors recommend it and the written course is very tedious, especially for OL....

I find the OL course much less tedious to teach. The cárta poist and 4 pics use much more conversational Irish than the learning off by heart and speed writing needed for the Higher course.

I would love if our school would do the oral but the older teachers won't budge. They like things the way they are. I've given grinds to a few students from other schools who had the oral for JC and they're much better prepared for the LC.

gaeilgebeo

dory wrote: »

I find the OL course much less tedious to teach. The cárta poist and 4 pics use much more conversational Irish than the learning off by heart and speed writing needed for the Higher course.
.

I agree 100%.
I love teaching the OL course.

mick kk

Dory...I had same problem in our place.
Why don't you go on ahead yourself and do it with your classes. You don't need permission from your colleagues to do it. Why should they dictate to you what you do with your classes? Its up to an individual if they should do it or not...likewise, you are not forcing them to do it.

It is entirely optional whether a full year group do it, or just one class or just a few students from one class. I now make all my students prepare for it and then they can choose in March of 3rd year whether they proceed with exam or not.

gaeilgebeo

mick kk wrote: »

Why don't you go on ahead yourself and do it with your classes. You don't need permission from your colleagues to do it. Why should they dictate to you what you do with your classes? Its up to an individual if they should do it or not.

It is entirely optional whether a full year group do it, or just one class or just a few students from one class.

That's all well and good until you have parents ringing in wanting to know why their son/daughter "have" to do an oral exam when the other classes don't.
Or why their son/daughter is not getting to do an oral exam when Johnny down the road is.
Our department was very split about bringing it in. It came up for discussion with the inspector during a WSE and he advised that it would be brought in for all classes or not at all.

dory

mick kk wrote: »

Dory...I had same problem in our place.
Why don't you go on ahead yourself and do it with your classes. You don't need permission from your colleagues to do it. Why should they dictate to you what you do with your classes? Its up to an individual if they should do it or not...likewise, you are not forcing them to do it.

It is entirely optional whether a full year group do it, or just one class or just a few students from one class. I now make all my students prepare for it and then they can choose in March of 3rd year whether they proceed with exam or not.

As Gaeilgebeo said it would just be a nightmare. I'd also have complaints that Mary was being prepared for an oral she wouldn't be sitting and wasting time that could be spent on poety/prós. I really want to do it, but for us it would only be possible if we all did it together.

mick kk

Well, I can only give you my experience of doing it and all of the feedback from parents and students has been positive. No parent has complained to me about doing it. Many didn't realise that there was optional oral and were fine about the students doing it. The ones who had spent money on Gaeltacht courses were also delighted. If you look at the syllabus, and the set up of the oral, they are supposed to be able to speak the language anyhow...and there is a lot of overlap between the written and oral e.g. the rólghlacadh can be used as léamhthuiscintí and the students can write scéals based on the sraith pic so students who will not do the oral are still happy that there needs are being met.

Also, if the students don't do the oral exam they have very little chance of getting an A in the subject. If you look at your results [or the results of your school] I am almost certain that you have very little As if you haven't been doing the oral exam. The written paper is only worth 60% so when they make errors on the written paper they are losing less marks overall if they have done the oral.