Irish Essays

Fobia

Well, I don't seem to be able to search on this forum today, so I'll just write and hope that this hasn't been posted before

I did a study course in Irish last week and we were given 8 essays printed out, and told that the best thing to do would be to learn off all the essays for the JC. However I don't feel I'm that bad at essays and am not sure simply learning off stuff is the way forward.

Just wondering, what's the general opinion on learning off essays? Are you learning off a few or are you gonna just make one up on the day?

PurpleFistMixer

I am viciously opposed to learning off essays.

However, since the essay is (allegedly) marked primarily on good grammar and such, it seems learning off essays is the way to get the most points.

Unless you're like me and hate the concept with such fiery passion that your brain simply will not absorb the essay (or.. *cough* are just too lazy to do it).

My plan is to learn off phrases from essays (the more complicated grammatical ones), then write it on the day. Of course, since at junior cert level there's a hell of a lot of grammar we don't know, it's inevitably going to be more flawed than an essay which is learned off, but I don't mind so much. I employed this tactic for the mock and got an A (okay, barely, and my Irish teacher had to remark my essay because the examiner hated it so much), so I'm sticking with it.

However, in the long run, it seems more worth it to try and learn the irish than to just learn it off. I mean, the girl who sits beside me in Irish class often has to ask me what lines in HER essay mean, because she just learned them off and can't remember. I don't see much point in that.

Scarinae

I know it's kinda like cheating, but fo my junior cert I learned off an essay about having an accident and decided that no matter hat the title was, my character would go and have an accident. Trip to the zoo? Well, I'd have an accident. Birthday party? I'd have an accident.

Luckily, the essay which came up (2002) was something like "Accident in the playground" so I was sorted!! I got me an A, woohoo

declan_lgs

Fishie wrote:

I know it's kinda like cheating

I don't get it .

I'm hoping to do the same as you Fishie... learn one (or maybe a few) essays and hope for the best. I'm actually not too bad at learning essays and notes and stuff off by heart ... Irish is torture tho, cause I dunno feck all grammer/spellings. But I cannot write a half decent Irish essay from scratch, so I'll have to learn at least a few and work some magic during the exam.

Eoghan-psych

declan_lgs wrote:

I don't get it .

I'm hoping to do the same as you Fishie... learn one (or maybe a few) essays and hope for the best. I'm actually not too bad at learning essays and notes and stuff off by heart ... Irish is torture tho, cause I dunno feck all grammer/spellings. But I cannot write a half decent Irish essay from scratch, so I'll have to learn at least a few and work some magic during the exam.

Bear in mind that whoever is correcting your scripts is going to be an Irish teacher. They will be familiar with the "learning off" approach.

What they will *also* be very familiar with is the fact that they have a huge pile of scripts to get through, all of which are for the exact same exam paper. That means that chances are the marker is going to see more than one 'learned' essay, and will be bored stupid reading "one day at the zoo" for the fifteenth time. Any mistakes will be marked *much* more severely [or just not receive the benefit of the doubt] and any marks going for creativity/style etc will also be reduced.

I *definitely* know that at third level it pays to make your scripts interesting and different - a moderately good though original answer will be looked on more favourably than recycled material written slightly better.

Thinking back to my own JC days [seems so long ago now, but it's only 5 or 6 years], one way to *dramatically* improve your essay writing is to get used to using metaphors. If you don't know the "right" way to talk about the details of something, don't be afraid to write using analogy or metaphor exactly as you would in English.

declan_lgs

Shouldn't the scripts be marked independently?

My Irish teacher mainly gives us essays to learn off... So say if he'd given us and essay on "an accident in the zoo", and everyone had learned it, and "an accident that happened on a school tour" came up ... Surely most ppl would write about the essay they'd already learned? ... umm ...
WE'RE ALL DOOMED!

Fobia

Though the points Eoghan-psych made are valid for the Leaving Cert, for the junior cert the essay is mainly about grammar and spelling. If a perfect essay is learnt off and is relevant to the question, the examiner has to give full marks no matter how many times he/she see's it (this is according to the guy in a study course I did). The letter is where creativity etc comes in, this is why people don't learn off letters.

My problem isn't that I can't learn off essays, or even that I don't want to (well....of course I don't want to...but still), it's that I don't see the point in getting an A in the junior cert when it doesn't really matter in the long run, instead of getting a B and being better prepared for the LC - a much more important exam.

I think I'm going to go with PurpleFistMixer's idea of learning off a few good sentances which can be applied to any essay.

4Xcut

having done junior cert higher irish i can tell you that its all luck. there's no way to be properly prepared because 99% of junior cert irish teachers are crap. the essay title, theme questions and comprehensions can change a C to an A and visa versa. DON"T learn off essays, if you can get your verbs right that will make a huge improvement, the irish dictionary focloir has verb tables in the middle that are easy to understand and use still time to pick it up(tight but very do-able with a little bit of effort). you are not expected to know about the genitive case and how its caused by compound prepositions and other advanced grammer such as that.

Crania

I learned off one Irish essay and I keep using that exact same essay everytime I have a test and it always gets me an A. But it is sort of like cheating

Rozabeez

Hang on, so what are you going to do if a load of people have the same essay as you, and the examiner notices?

Fobia

Rozabeez wrote:

Hang on, so what are you going to do if a load of people have the same essay as you, and the examiner notices?

According to "Peadar" (study course teacher dude), it doesn't matter - they can't take any marks away whether they've never seen it before or they've seen it a million times....

philologos

Fobia wrote:

Well, I don't seem to be able to search on this forum today, so I'll just write and hope that this hasn't been posted before

I did a study course in Irish last week and we were given 8 essays printed out, and told that the best thing to do would be to learn off all the essays for the JC. However I don't feel I'm that bad at essays and am not sure simply learning off stuff is the way forward.

Just wondering, what's the general opinion on learning off essays? Are you learning off a few or are you gonna just make one up on the day?

I think learning off essays is purely pathetic and my teacher has tried to get me to learn off essays from other people however the way I'd like to do it is write a few of my own Irish essays and get my teacher to correct them and then i will learn the ones I have written best. The Junior Cert examiners dont endorse it in any way at all and they have no preference towards learned off essays as opposed to normally written essays. I think of it from this view, If i can get 81% in Irish with minimal study I can push myself to get the A if I work hard which I plan doing over the next 7 weeks!

J Campion

Our Irish teacher (who is quite good) told us that if we have a story about
a) an accident,
b) a robbery and
c) a fire,
we'll be sorted. Looking back through the past papers, I suppose at least one of those would work for any scéal that has come up.

grimloch

you probably shouldnt be relying on pre-learnt essays, fair enough i wrote on one of those for my junior cert

what if you learnt those off and they didnt come up at all and you werent able to produce a well structured essay with good grammer and so forth?

4Xcut

there's no probably about it, its a bad idea.don't do it. grimloch, you had a good teacher to back it up if something happened on the day. many people don't, i would have been fecked if i'd learned off an essay instead of learning the language properly

the smiley one

So, I wanted an A in my JC and I was told that one of the only ways to do this is was to learn off an essay, grammar etc perfect. So I did, I think it was something about a sportsperson, meh, can't remember...... Neway so I went into my exam and....none of the essay titles suited - da da da dum........

I then just did the díospóireacht (which I had lernt off an opening and closing paragraph for) and got an A

Moral of the story: Do the díospóireacht!!!!! (not as many people do it therefore if you are anyway good at arguing a point, and have a respectable level of Irish, you will be fine)

fearcruach

do not learn essays. learn the basic grammar, its not too hard and then do it yourself. its easier that way (i apologise for my lack of capitals)

Scarinae

Ok, when I say I learned off an essay, I mean that I learned off the relevant vocabulary and maybe one or two phrases - not that I learned off every single sentence!!

Da_IRISH_ONE4U

Im in Leaving Cert now but when i was in the Junior I just didn't bother learning essays off. I got a B too at higher (and now im in pass )... teacher is useless. Anywayz... i reckon ye should all learn off a load of phrases instead of a whole essay. The examiner is going to be an Irish teacher and at the end of the day, its the quality of your irish that gets you the marks not just the content.

Ah... da memories! You know where ye have a poem to do... i used to do the poem Subh Milis for EVERYTHING. Twaz funny, teacher told me id never get away with it.

alanoc9

learn off things to say, not entire eassys.if everyone in your group learned them off guess what would happen. where in galway you from?

Casserine

I had a bad Irish teacher from 1st Year to just before Christmas 3rd Year. The last few months my new teacher has been cramming the entire course into our heads. Everyone's so nervous. My standard of Irish is decent but I'm still terrified, especially about the sceal. I've learnt off a number of essays, block paragraphs and useful vocabulary, so I should be able to adapt...

i-luv-pancakes

lol i learnt one essay of an accident and one poem "subh milis" and used them to death for three years!!

If you're gonna learn one make sure its damn good! no point learning crap. and make sure you can alter the first paragraph to suit the title you're given.

Gots me an A

Piste

...whoah, blast from the past!

Smartly Dressed

I'm so glad I'm fluent.

In the Junior Cert we had the same teacher for geography and Irish. He did around three weeks of Irish with us in the three years and in that time gave us around two stories and three poems. I learned one story, one poem (the night before the exam), walked in, did what I had to do and then wrote a poor essay (for a fluent man) on the Beijing Olympics or whatever it was.

I knew of course that I would get an A which of course I did.

And if you're wondering, I got a B in geography without ever once studying in the three years. The teacher was a genius.

And by the way, I did honours in both subjects before any of you think of some smart retort!

PurpleFistMixer

Wow you ledgebag, how impressed we all are now.

Fad

Smartly Dressed wrote: »

I'm so glad I'm fluent.
I knew of course that I would get an A which of course I did.



And by the way, I did honours in both subjects before any of you think of some smart retort!

I know of course you love to massage your frankly overinflated ego.

As for the second, who would bother?

Piste

Funny how he calls himself a man, yet did the JC this year...

Fad

Piste wrote: »

Funny how he calls himself a man, yet did the JC this year...

Ya see he's just that badass that he can call himself one.

{Barely stopping short of making a comment about the size of his internet penis, i decided it'd be a bit much:pac:}

Smartly Dressed

Ohhh, the jealousy.

PurpleFistMixer

The jealousy indeed.
(Though I didn't get an A in Irish for the JC, to my gravest shame, because I refused to learn off an essay. It paid off for the LC in the end, though.)

Fad

Smartly Dressed wrote: »

Ohhh, the jealousy.

Not jealously, just the delightful ability to spot when someones is quite clearly bullshítting

Halla Basin

I see nothing wrong with learning off essays.

'Course, if you're learning off entire ones, you'll need quite a few to make sure all titles are covered.

Personally, I'd learn off about 10-15 paragraphs that, with a few minor alterations, can be made to fit together under any title.

And don't go on about how that won't help one to actually learn Irish. It's a dead language. I, and the majority of other students, only study it for the points.

In fact, I'm learning off answers to every question on both papers except the reading comprehensions. It's a guaranteed C if you have a good memory, even if you have no idea of the grammar or meaning of the language.

PurpleFistMixer

I might point out that if you're intending on learning no Irish grammar at Junior Cert level, have fun learning off 4 pages of perfect, and more complex grammar for the essay at Leaving Cert, not to mention several pages each for the novel and poems you have to study.
Taking shortcuts like this at an early level is shooting yourself in the foot for later on.

Interestingly enough, the post I made at the start of this thread was when I was in 3rd year, saying I wouldn't learn off an essay. That tactic didn't work out fabulously when I got a B, but because I'd actually spent time concentrating on the language itself, I got an A1 in the Leaving Cert without too much hassle. And as much as I'll defend the importance of the Junior Cert, the Leaving Cert is the one that's going to get you into college, and go down on your CV, so I'd be far more inclined to plan towards that than a shortterm gain.

Halla Basin

Of course I intend on, and have learned the rudimentary rules of Irish grammar. I understand that to pass Higher Level Leaving Cert Irish, you'll need to be fluent in the language, but that's what Transition Year is for, right? To become fluent in Irish and your other language.

As for the Leaving Cert Essay, I'm told three-pages is satisfactory. And if I'm happy with my standard of Irish by then, I won't learn off one.

Anyway, when I said you don't necessarily need any grammar for the Junior Cert, I was thinking of a particular student in my class who has the same idea. He came over from the Philippines only last year, and he's taking the Higher level exam this year. He doesn't understand a word of Irish, but he has a memory like an actual computer. Of course, he's only aiming for a pass, but it would still be an achievement. He hasn't said, but I doubt he'll be doing the Leaving Cert Irish. Not Higher Level, anyway. This is mostly just to show up us natives who've been studying the language for the best part of ten years now, and are still clueless. It's hilarious, too.

PurpleFistMixer

To have the attitude "I'll just learn things off and not properly understand it", and then expect you can gain fluency in a year is... well, it doesn't make much sense to me. Surely if you want to be fluent in Irish you should start as soon as possible.

And you're right, 3 pages would probably be fine. I was just highlighting the difference between JC and LC - what works for one may not work for the other.

Fad

Halla Basin wrote: »

Of course I intend on, and have learned the rudimentary rules of Irish grammar. I understand that to pass Higher Level Leaving Cert Irish, you'll need to be fluent in the language, but that's what Transition Year is for, right? To become fluent in Irish and your other language.

Fluency?

No, its not expected, you just need a decent command of it.

Also they'd hardly expect you to become fluent in a language during a year that isnt compulsory.

Halla Basin

PurpleFistMixer wrote:

To have the attitude "I'll just learn things off and not properly understand it"

Nonono, it's the Filipino Computer who doesn't understand what he's learning off. I, however, can't learn off any Irish unless I know the rough translation into English.

PurpleFistMixer wrote:

Surely if you want to be fluent in Irish you should start as soon as possible.

Ideally, yes, but I haven't time for much of anything this year. You know, study, school, chess, Brawl, choir, JC music (in ten weeks! Yipes!), two piano exams, and the like. Yeah, I'll leave it 'till fourth year... Anyway, I hear that under the best circumstances, a person can learn a new language in under three weeks, without even having ever heard of it before. It's a challenge, you dig?

Fad wrote:

Fluency?

No, its not expected, you just need a decent command of it.

Okay, perhaps I meant Fluency is needed if you want to comfortably get an A or B.


And maybe to clear most everything else up: My attitude obviously isn't ideal, but it gets me by on a level that I have been satisfied with so far, and may continue to get me by on that level until I no longer need it, natch?

PurpleFistMixer

Halla Basin wrote: »

Ideally, yes, but I haven't time for much of anything this year. You know, study, school, chess, Brawl, choir, JC music (in ten weeks! Yipes!), two piano exams, and the like. Yeah, I'll leave it 'till fourth year... Anyway, I hear that under the best circumstances, a person can learn a new language in under three weeks, without even having ever heard of it before. It's a challenge, you dig?

I'd say it takes less time to study Irish grammar than to learn off essays, but anyway. At least it'll give you something to do during TY.

Fad

PurpleFistMixer wrote: »

At least it'll give you something to do during TY.

Unless you're a seriously motivated person, don't depend on yourself working in TY! Best intentions and what not.

Gaeilge-go-deo

I must be the only student in ireland to be actually learning irish in school, i dont have a great teacher but durin the summer after irish college i like opened my ears to tg4 and **** like that and i have such a big vocabulary, i walk through jc papers and im in 2nd year....:D Go n éirí libh!

Fad

Gaeilge-go-deo wrote: »

I must be the only student in ireland to be actually learning irish in school, i dont have a great teacher but durin the summer after irish college i like opened my ears to tg4 and **** like that and i have such a big vocabulary, i walk through jc papers and im in 2nd year....:D Go n éirí libh!

You must have a huge head to fit all that vocab in:rolleyes:

I also love how you go on about learning Irish but dont capitalise it once, just a comment

millington

Halla Basin wrote: »

And don't go on about how that won't help one to actually learn Irish. It's a dead language. I, and the majority of other students, only study it for the points.

No it's cos we have to!

Fad

millington wrote: »

No it's cos we have to!

I study it because I love it

Halla Basin

Fad wrote: »

I study it because I love it

Freak.

Fad

Halla Basin wrote: »

Freak.

Thats not very nice....................mods!

I'm proud-ish of my country and heritage, so instead of watching soccer or any other sport in the name of national pride, I learn our constitutional first language, which is considerably simpler than English...........

PurpleFistMixer

Irish is deadly, English is fail. End of.

-Els-

I would advise you learn off an essay which you can manipulate depending on the title. I ended up getting an A, and my friend who is fluent (gone to gaeltacht for like 5 years) went down the learnign off phrases route and got a B. For example for my JC I had this essay where I was chased by this guy and had a fight with him, turned out it was actually soembody I knew etc.. (obviously a bit more dramatic). So whatever title I got, all I had to do was get on my own, so a concert- get lost, walk in the mountains- wander away form group etc...

The fact is the JC Irish exam is a complete sham of an exam and doesn't really reflect your actual competance at irish, rather your ability to learn off and how good a teacher you have. There is so much focus on grammer in the essays that its almost impossible to get it all right if you're just learning off phrases. The whole thing with the cases and the Tuiseal Ginedeach (sp??) is just so complicated it takes years to learn. A good idea with your essay is to use a few complicated Tuiseal Ginedeach phrases (eg I lár na cathrach) to show off to the examiner and give them the impression you've learned off the whole thing...

Fad

-Els- wrote: »

The fact is the JC Irish exam is a complete sham of an exam and doesn't really reflect your actual competance at irish, rather your ability to learn off and how good a teacher you have. There is so much focus on grammer in the essays that its almost impossible to get it all right if you're just learning off phrases. The whole thing with the cases and the Tuiseal Ginedeach (sp??) is just so complicated it takes years to learn. A good idea with your essay is to use a few complicated Tuiseal Ginedeach phrases (eg I lár na cathrach) to show off to the examiner and give them the impression you've learned off the whole thing...

To be fair, I dont think you're really expected to have a brilliant grasp of the TG at JC level.

Also thinking you fooled the examiner *shakes head* You're getting corected by someone who has at the least a degree in Irish, just make sure you dont try that at LC level.

Gaeilge-go-deo

Thanks for the advice man!...:D

jelly:)

In my Irish class the teacher made us all learn off phrases you can use in any essay (scread me in ard me chinn is mo ghutha etc.)

Some people ended up learning off entire essays she had corrected for them but I stuck to learning a few random phrases. (Getting in a few old sayings are also very good to impress the examiner).

I got an A in the JC by just fitting in all my phrases whenever I could. It depends on how good you are at remembering things as oppose to how well you can structure sentences in Irish.

Besta luck!!:D

KatiexKOUTURE--

I actually have a class Irish teacher.. Best in the school..

Anyway she says to learn off phrases, know your verbs in all tenses and you should be set..

As for the aiste she said that being a young person in Ireland today with the recession and all and an agallamh with a polteoir are tipped to come up..

And does anybody know of a website or book with Irish phrases?..