Irish Language, important or not.

Hi Aoife,

The language isn't difficult to learn, it's just that everyone is right when they say that it isn't taught properly. It's not taught properly at primary school level as most primary school teachers would struggle to put together coherent sentences in Irish by themselves without the use of a textbook, and that has a huge knock on effect to students confidence when they then go into secondary school and feel they know nothing and of course they blame themselves and don't necessarily realise that the damage was done when they were 4 or 5 years of age.

My father told me that the standard of Irish he had leaving national school was better than most people's Irish leaving secondary school now.

In my opinion a good starting point with the 5th and 6th years would be to ask them how they view their national school education in Irish and what they feel they got out of 8 years of Irish learning there. It might put it into perspective for them!

Anyway the great news to deliver to them is that Irish is easy to learn. Just learn masculine and feminine nouns, get a grip on verbs, do lots of reading and that's it.

That's just one suggestion. Obviously there are loads.

pog it wrote: »

Hi Aoife,

The language isn't difficult to learn, it's just that everyone is right when they say that it isn't taught properly. It's not taught properly at primary school level as most primary school teachers would struggle to put together coherent sentences in Irish by themselves without the use of a textbook, and that has a huge knock on effect to students confidence when they then go into secondary school and feel they know nothing and of course they blame themselves and don't necessarily realise that the damage was done when they were 4 or 5 years of age.

My father told me that the standard of Irish he had leaving national school was better than most people's Irish leaving secondary school now.

In my opinion a good starting point with the 5th and 6th years would be to ask them how they view their national school education in Irish and what they feel they got out of 8 years of Irish learning there. It might put it into perspective for them!

Anyway the great news to deliver to them is that Irish is easy to learn. Just learn masculine and feminine nouns, get a grip on verbs, do lots of reading and that's it.

That's just one suggestion. Obviously there are loads.

Couldn't agree more, after primary school and secondary school, the vast majority of people in Ireland should be fluent if not very close to it. When I was in secondary school, all my homework was sheets upon sheets of Irish to learn off by heart, often not even understanding what I was learning.

My girlfriend's mother was raised through the medium of Irish and has by far the best grasp of the language than anyone I know. She would always praise the Irish and would always try and promote its importance. Would love to have the level of Irish she has.

I personally think the Irish language in as necessary to Ireland as the air we breath, our language is an expression of out culture, promotes the Ireland in all its beautiful forms, our history and of who we are. But I'm afraid that the some people in this country would happily see the death of our beautiful language. I fear the day Irish is made optional, it may be the death nail of Irish in this country.

pog, I'd agree with your post in general, but disagree with the opening statement, I only learned Gaeilge as an Dyslexic adult and found it extremely challenging, I was exempt all through school and It took me the best part of 7 years to get to a reasonable level, my spelling is still terrible, but thats par-for-the-course with dyslexia. My saving grace was a 7 year old daughter who never judged and was always happy to correct me without making a big deal out of it, she's 16 now and a beautiful speaker, I'm still doing me best, but there's hope for everyone.

pog it wrote: »

Hi Aoife,

The language isn't difficult to learn, it's just that everyone is right when they say that it isn't taught properly. It's not taught properly at primary school level as most primary school teachers would struggle to put together coherent sentences in Irish by themselves without the use of a textbook, and that has a huge knock on effect to students confidence when they then go into secondary school and feel they know nothing and of course they blame themselves and don't necessarily realise that the damage was done when they were 4 or 5 years of age.

My father told me that the standard of Irish he had leaving national school was better than most people's Irish leaving secondary school now.

In my opinion a good starting point with the 5th and 6th years would be to ask them how they view their national school education in Irish and what they feel they got out of 8 years of Irish learning there. It might put it into perspective for them!

Anyway the great news to deliver to them is that Irish is easy to learn. Just learn masculine and feminine nouns, get a grip on verbs, do lots of reading and that's it.

That's just one suggestion. Obviously there are loads.

TacAide wrote: »

Couldn't agree more, after primary school and secondary school, the vast majority of people in Ireland should be fluent if not very close to it.

This is not true, the contact time with Irish, the actual number of hours spent learning it (the numer of years these hours are spread over is irrelevant) is simply no where near enough to even get close to fluency, its barely enough to get a low to moderate level conversational ability, and thats if the poetry/literature stuff was left out.

The worst thing you can do is have an unreasonable expectation that can never be realised, it sets the system up to fail from the start.

The truth is that the children are learning as much Irish as you could reasonably expect them to given the amount of time they spend learning the subject and the priorities in the existing curriculam.
Those priorities could be changed, emphasising spoken Irish over literature for example, and a better ability of spoken Irish could be achieved (at the cost of an even lower level of literacy in Irish than is currently achieved) but the time given to the subject in schools only allows so much to be achieved, and the best teacher, and the best teaching methods won't change that.

We need to recognise that short of immersion second language education like a Gaelscoil, it is simply not possible to teach someone a language in school if their only contact with that language is in school.

pog it wrote: »

The truth is subjective and it would seem nobody else here so far would agree with you.

It's a damn shame that I don't have a report to blast you with wherein for example unannounced independent inspections of primary school teachers have been carried out and their grasp of the language and method of translation tested and proven to be inadequate.

It's pathetic the level they are going into schools with. They do about 3 weeks in the Gaeltacht for their teacher training and some Irish homework after that and then they are free to go as far as the Irish part of the learning goes.

I've been through the system myself.

You are quite right, 'truth' is quite subjective, but my truth is based on the evidence I have seen haveing spent quite a good while looking into the area over the past year or so.

I accept that the teachers in many cases have a less than exemplary grasp of the language themselves, but there is actually good evidence that the subject knowledge of the teacher actually has only quite a limited impact on how well the class is likely to do.

pog it wrote: »

...On 'how well the class is likely to do'?

As it is, we don't have any matriculation exam for pupils in 6th class so how was this evidence gathered?

If you are talking about how well a class gets on later in 2nd level, 3rd level, etc. they will achieve that as a result of secondary school and third level or further education, when there is a combination of good teaching, self learning, etc.

Doesn't change the fact that when they leave 6th class, they have been grossly let down by teachers at primary level and they could have had a proper headstart in the language.

I'm not talking specifically about learning Irish in the Irish education system, the statement is based on research on education in general which suggests that the teachers subject knowledge has only a limited impact on how well the class is likely to do.

Now, you could say the Irish education system is different, or that learning Irish is different, but if you do, I would hope you include a bit about why this is the case.

In this specific Irish case, my opinion is that the evidence that shows in general that the subject knowledge of the teacher(or lack there of) only has a limited impact on the class, holds true for teachers in primary schools. Given this, even though I would agree that the standard of Irish amongst primary school teachers is not what it should be, this fact alone does not necessarily mean that pupils are being let down, or that they are learning less than they could reasonably be expected to.

There are other factors involved, but basicly it boils down to the fact that a native Irish speaker does not necessarily make a good Irish teacher just because their own Irish is at a native speaker level.
Whereas someone with only limited Irish themselves may still be a very good teacher because they happen to use methods that work, and as a result may well end up achieving a better result than someone whos subject knowledge is much better than their own but is ineffectual at imparting that knowledge to others and helping them to learn themselves.

GaelMise wrote: »

This is not true, the contact time with Irish, the actual number of hours spent learning it (the numer of years these hours are spread over is irrelevant) is simply no where near enough to even get close to fluency, its barely enough to get a low to moderate level conversational ability, and thats if the poetry/literature stuff was left out.

The worst thing you can do is have an unreasonable expectation that can never be realised, it sets the system up to fail from the start.

The truth is that the children are learning as much Irish as you could reasonably expect them to given the amount of time they spend learning the subject and the priorities in the existing curriculam.
Those priorities could be changed, emphasising spoken Irish over literature for example, and a better ability of spoken Irish could be achieved (at the cost of an even lower level of literacy in Irish than is currently achieved) but the time given to the subject in schools only allows so much to be achieved, and the best teacher, and the best teaching methods won't change that.

We need to recognise that short of immersion second language education like a Gaelscoil, it is simply not possible to teach someone a language in school if their only contact with that language is in school.

I understand what you are saying, but really when a person goes all through primary from the age of 4/5 and through secondary school, reading, writing and speaking Irish, all those years should give a student a very good grasp of Irish, maybe I was over ambitious with my previous post, but at the same time if someone was exposed to a language for that long, people should have a good standard of Irish.

GaelMise wrote: »

Why? I'm not trying to be awkward, but where is the evidence that the amount of time spent learning Irish in the Irish education system should be producing a better result than it is?

In my opinion it would be quite surprising if it did. The amount of time spent actually learning Irish, and the curriculum that is taught taken together should to my mind be producing just about what it is producing. If you were to look objectivly at the system we have, the ammount of time actually spent learning Irish and the curriculum I expect you would conclude that what you should be getting out of it is students with a reasonable volcabury, basic grasp of grammer, just about able to make out a simple piece of text and able to use basic words and phrases, but below a level of being able to hold a conversation comfortably. Ie essentially what we are getting.

The system may not be producing what we would like it to produce, but I think it is producing what we should reasonably expect it to produce.

Well simply put, school work conducted during classes and homework help the student increase their knowledge base of Irish, much like any subject.

aoife willis wrote: »

Having read over all these posts I think the prevailing theme is the inability to successfully teach the Irish Language, particularly in English speaking schools. I am wondering however is it in fact the Irish persons psyche, the constant reiteration Irish is hard, Irish has no place in the world, which is more damaging to the teaching/learning and the overall success of the language.

There were claims that there is not enough time given to the subject to realistically expect students to be fluent by the time they leave school. This is a point I totally disagree with, due to the simple fact that I am currently sitting across from a fourth year girl on work experience who has fluent Irish. She never went to an Irish school, she is the only speaker in her family so it's not like she had an more education in the language than the school system provided.

How does Irish fair in comparison to the foreign languages taught in schools? I imagine there are many people taking French, Spanish etc. to leaving cert level with the same if not a slightly better grasp on the conversational aspect of the language in comparison to Irish, with on average 2 classes a week less.

Is it our view of and the image of the Irish language which hinders are learning or the teaching of the language?
Almost every Irish person you come across would say they wish they could speak Irish or gave it more attention in school. There are plenty of resources out there to learn it. So why don't we use them?

Well, you are bringing up quite a few different topics for discussion there.
With relation to the importance of attiudes to the language, yes this is important, and if a child is constantly told that learning Irish is difficult and pointless, it is likely to become a self fulfilling prophesy.

However, when it comes to people wo say they would love to have Irish, yet never seem to do anything about it, this generally relates back to the status of the language.

Languages can be ranked in status in any given society, in a largely monolingual society like ours, its obvious which language is on top.

However if you take a multilingual society like Switzerland, then it becomes more complex.
German, being the most widely spoken language in Switzerland has the highest status over all, but this does not necessarily mean that it has the highest status in all parts of Switzerland.
In the French speaking areas, French has the highest status, but because German is still a high status language, in French speaking areas, you will find that German is quite common as a second language.

Language status is important because it plays a large part in determining who learns what language.
The speakers of lower status languages invariably tend to learn High status languages, but the speakers of High status languages only rarely learn lower status languages.

In our own case, because English is arguably the highest status language in the world, you will only rarely find English speakers learning a second language, and when they do, it is almost exclusevly another Hich status language like French/German/Spanish.

Comming back to the relation between Irish and English here, English obviously has a much higher status than Irish in Ireland.
What you would expect to find then, and what you do find in practice is that Irish speakers would have a high tendancy to learn English and achieve fluency, whereas English speakers would be much less inclined to learn Irish and achieve fluency.

We often hear English speakers who say that they would love to learn Irish, but in reality, people do not tend to learn a language simply for a love of that language. A small number of people might, but large numbers of people do not tend to. What motivates large numbers of people to learn a language are practical concerns, concerns that go into the status of a language.
Can I gain employment from knowing that language? Will it open up oppertunities for me? Is knowing that language essential and well regarded in society?
For an Irish speaker learning English, the answer to these questions is absoutly yes. For an English speaker learning Irish, it is much less clear, and as such motivation is much lower.

Learning a language is a difficult, time consuming and often expencive thing to try to do, motivation is a major part of doing it successfully. If all you have is 'i'd like to know it' rather than 'I need to know it' or 'knowing it will benefit me for x, y, and z reasons' then motivation is not likely to last.


As for the student of yours that has fluent Irish, ask them are they interested in the language outside of school. I would not be surprised if they have spent quite a bit of time studying/using the language outside of classtime and homework.
Ity be the case that this particular student has some unusual ability to learn languages and did indeed become fluent through the average amount of contact time that most students get from classtime and homework, though I would find that a little hard to believe.

The fact remains however, that 99.9% of students do not achieve fluency in Irish from the average amount of time spent learning Irish in ordinary English medium schools.
Are we going to look on this and conclude that for some unknown reason, tens of thousands of students are all underperforming, consistantly every year? Or would it make more sense to conclude that overall, the system is producing what it is able to produce, ie students that have quite a lot of Irish when you look at it, but still not a comfortabl conversational ability in the language.

Given the system we have, that students do not develop a conversational ability in the language is hardily surprising, I know from my own experiance in school that conversation was never something that was developed.
Not once in 14 years did I have an actual conversation in Irish, I practiced words and phrases, and learned off how to have one particular conversation for my oral, but that is a far cry from actually developing a conversational ability, and no wonder then when it comes to it that people are not comfortable haveing a conversation in Irish.

When people consider their poor outcome in Irish, they often forget that lots of people get poor outcomes in many subjects at school.

How many people end their schooldays proficient in maths? What does that even mean?

Well, to give that a context, how many people leave school as mathematicians? Virtually no-one - an A on the higher level in maths in the leaving cert does not make you a mathematician. It qualifies you to become one, if you continue studying the subject at third level, and then at graduate level. When you have a PhD, you can call yourself a mathematician. And this is the same for almost all other subjects you do at school - Irish schools do not produce geographers, historians or scientists either, and they produce very very few people fluent in French, German, Spanish or whatever.

The two exceptions here are English and Irish. Because almost everyone in our country speaks English as a first or good second language, with very few exceptions we come out of school proficient in English.
Regarding Irish, most people from the real Gaeltacht end their school days proficient in Irish, as do most people who get their secondary education in Irish in other parts of the country, a lot of those who receive their primary but not their secondary education through Irish, and a significant number of those who receive their entire education through English.

Considered in this way, IMO the results we get in Irish - while a lot less than optimal - are far better than we usually give ourselves credit for.

pog it wrote: »

If your arguments were true, then you'd have to be able to explain how pupils leaving national school in the 60s had a higher standard in Irish than do students on leaving secondary school today.

You might argue that more time was spent in the classroom on Irish in the 60s, but even allowing for that, it can't account for such a major gap in standards.

First of all, the primary curriculum was much narrower in the 60s.
In second place, something like half of the teachers were from the Gaeltacht, and they had the ability to speak it correctly and being trained teachers, were able to teach it.
Also the stick was used liberally, particularly in boys' schools (and not just for Irish).
And there was the carrot of a job in the civil service if you did well enough!
That said, the thing is, lots of other kids didn't leave primary school in the 60s with a good level of Irish - particularly if they weren't destined for the middle class.

Now, if we were to have an independent study done across the country to test national school teachers standard in Irish, we'd then have our answer.

I'd love to see Ruairi Quinn's face if you made that suggestion to him! Apparently he thinks a C on the higher level is evidence of competence in Irish!

deirdremf wrote: »

First of all, the primary curriculum was much narrower in the 60s.
In second place, something like half of the teachers were from the Gaeltacht, and they had the ability to speak it correctly and being trained teachers, were able to teach it.
Also the stick was used liberally, particularly in boys' schools (and not just for Irish).
And there was the carrot of a job in the civil service if you did well enough!
That said, the thing is, lots of other kids didn't leave primary school in the 60s with a good level of Irish - particularly if they weren't destined for the middle class.
I'd love to see Ruairi Quinn's face if you made that suggestion to him! Apparently he thinks a C on the higher level is evidence of competence in Irish!

In terms of the curriculum, I acknowledged in my post that more time was spent on Irish back then.
But saying the curriculum was more narrow is not really true. As far as I know pupils were also taught Latin, at least in terms of prayers, and on top of that they learned history, maths, english reading, geography, etc.

Plenty of teachers were not from the Gaeltacht. My own father's wasn't.

The main point is, that if pupils had the ability, they were able to leave national school with a really high standard in Irish.

Those now who have that ability are not leaving with that same standard.

That is shocking.

National school teachers are therefore no longer respected in the same way they used to be. Even though their Irish levels are not getting the attention they should be, it's widely acknowledged that teachers these days are taking it easy in the main. We're getting every twit who wants a safe and relatively cushy life.

And this is highly relevant as to how students perceive the language..

Regarding number of hours and the resultant lack of fluency, the Canadians did a study regarding language learning with regards to French, published back in 1981.

Swain, M. (1981). Linguistic expectations: Core, extended and immersion
programmes. Canadian Modern Language Review, 37, 486-497

They reckoned that 1,200 hours of language contact would give a "Basic" understanding of a language (French in this case). Your average Irish student gets about 1,388 hours language "contact" over the course of Primary/Secondary education.

See the following doctoral paper from RIJKSUNIVERSITEIT GRONINGEN in the Netherlands:

Retention and Attrition of Irish as a Second Language
A longitudinal study of general and communicative
proficiency in Irish among second level school leavers
and the influence of instructional background,
language use and attitude/motivation variables

http://dissertations.ub.rug.nl/FILES/faculties/arts/2003/l.murtagh/thesis.pdf

Some language policies have specified expected levels of competence in terms of
number of instructional hours. For example, in 1977, the Ontario Ministry of
Education in Canada set down three basic levels of competence which may be
achieved from second language programmes (Swain, 1981: 490). The ‘basic’ level of
competence is considered to be achievable in 1,200 hours, a ‘middle’ level in 2,100
hours and a ‘top’ level in 5,000 hours. A ‘basic’ level indicates that a learner has
acquired “a fundamental knowledge of the language, the ability to participate in simple
conversations, the ability to read simple texts and the ability to resume the study of
French in later life”. A learner who has reached the ‘middle’ level should be able “to
read newspapers and books of personal interest with help from a dictionary, to
understand radio and television, to participate adequately in conversation and to
function reasonably well in a French-speaking community after a few months’
residence”. The ‘top’ level, should enable the learner to “continue his or her education
using French as the language of instruction at the college or university level, to accept
employment using French as the working language, and to participate easily in
conversation”.

In the early eighties, Harris (1984) estimated “the total number of hours exposure to
Irish during the primary-school years” to be roughly about 1,728. This was based on a
weekly average of approximately 5.4 hours per school week. The recommended
minimum number of hours for Irish in the new primary school Irish curriculum
(Department of Education and Science, 1999b: 17) is considerably lower (3.5 hours
per week) than this average. Summing across the whole eight years of primary school,
this more recent estimate amounts to 936 hours. A similar calculation for post-primary
schools, based on figures supplied by the Department of Education and Science
(2002), indicates that the total time spent learning Irish at secondary is almost half of
that at primary. This is estimated on the basis of an average of three hours Irish per
week (x 66 weeks) at the two years of senior level and two hours and forty minutes a
week (x 99 weeks) at junior level (3 years), giving a total average of 452 hours.
Combining the estimates for primary and secondary school gives an average of 1,388
hours. If time on Irish during the one year optional transition year cycle is included
the total may be somewhat higher but is, at best, unlikely to be more than 1,450 hours,
still well below that estimated by Harris (1984) for primary school alone. These
comparisons suggest that there has been a significant decline in the time spent learning
Irish since the 1980’s.

If one were to describe the majority of current Leaving Certificate graduates of Irish
in terms of the three levels of proficiency defined above for French learners in Ontario,
they would, given the number of hours currently spent learning Irish, be functioning at
a ‘basic’ level of proficiency. It will be recalled, however, that the Leaving Certificate
Higher Level course in Irish expects that students would, on completion of that course,
be able to function competently through the medium of Irish in general social
interaction.
Finally, it is interesting to compare the number of Irish contact hours in the
‘ordinary’ school system with the corresponding amount in the ‘all-Irish’ or immersion
school system. The ‘all-Irish’ estimate was calculated on the basis of the length of the
school day (minus time on English instruction) over the eight year primary cycle and
the five year secondary cycle. The final estimate for ‘full’ immersion (from primary
through secondary) students who have completed the Leaving Certificate programme
is approximately 10,700 hours, a figure which is almost eight times that for ‘ordinary’
school students who are taught the language as a subject only. These immersion
school leavers would under the proficiency definitions presented earlier be considered
more than capable of functioning at the ‘top’ level of proficiency. That is to say, if
they so wished, they should be able to partake in all conversations in Irish, proceed to
third level Irish-medium education, or take up employment where Irish is the working
language.

GaelMise wrote: »

Thank you. I think it is fair to suggest that the decline in standards of Irish achieved, and the decline in the amount of time spent on Irish in schools over the same period are linked.

I accept that the standard of Irish amongst teachers may also have declined during this period too, but personally I think this is a less significant factor.

The question is, if we want to improve the standards of Irish achieved, how do we go about it?

There are several options, focusing on the standard of Irish among teachers is one of them, but I think it is not the most significant factor, and focusing on it too much is going to give limited results at best.

But you're still focusing in on it as a school subject: I trade you 15 minutes of conversation with an Irish-speaking friend or family member for every hour spent in a classroom and we'll see which produces the more efficient (and more enthusiastic) Irish speaker.