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LEAVING CERTIFICATE STUDENTS were relatively happy with today’s English Paper 2, with most describing it as “fair” afterwards.
Luke Saunders of Studyclix said everyone was surprised to see Heaney appear on paper one yesterday but there was another shock in store today when he appeared again, this time in the unseen poetry section”.
However he said most students were happy with the choice available as Larkin, Yeats, Dickinson and Plath all featured.
Of those students surveyed on Studyclix, 78 per cent described today’s paper two as “fair” with the rest describing it as “difficult” or “extremely difficult”.
But we want to know how you think you’d have managed it today. Here’s the full Higher Level paper. Bonus marks for attempting an answer in the comments section below.
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11 years on, I have forgotten a scary amount of what I learned in English class.
wot u on bout??
u wot m8?
Me fail English? That’s unpossible!
Oh how I wish journal.ie you uploaded this exact article yesterday.
Dunno y I failled english at skool
Me fail English, that’s unpossible.
“Okay, brain. You don’t like me, and I don’t like you, but let’s get through this thing and then I can continue killing you with beer”…..
Those questions made me feel a little sick inside, they brought back the traumatic memory of doing the leaving cert.
I got an A in honours English…but then there were eleven of them in my class. We had a great teacher.
I flue thruw higer level Englisch on the leavening certs? It was grand I goted my A
I’m now a Doctur
Good for you Maurice, though you look like a clown in your picture !!!
I’m an Enginear…..I think that speaks for itself with regard to my ability in English!!!
As does your spelling! :)
I think he was being Sarcastic Mark
Spot on Harry….I surprisingly got an A @ Ordinary Level.
Fair play Robert. I surprisingly got an A in honours level, although sarcasm wasn’t on that paper!! :)
Kinda makes you miss the days you could spend hours pondering a few lines of poetry. “Simple like a tightened bow”. Brilliant.
Hope they all aced it.
“A kind that is not natural in an age like this”
Compare and contrast 2 Films – Hangover 1 and Hangover 2
You had it, it was Jaws! No, I had Jaws 2.
It’s different.
It’s very different.
It’s a different shark.
It’s important to remember as important as schooling is and exams a gateway to greater things, do not confuse it with your education.
I didn’t have heaney done so I was very happy with his ommission. A
Lovely question on yeats helped.
I don’t fancy it myself, evocative language threw me off to Dickinson!
My son was delighted. Everything he had covered on the paper. Very happy. Studying now for hons maths tomor.
Hopefully he was able to finish his words in the essays….
No John Donne…that would have been a let-down in my day!…
Oh my god, those Macbeth questions sent shivers down my spine. I remember trying to answer a Macbeth question back in 1999. Those questions are very hard this year.
Likewise with the p&p ones for me. Could feel my skin crawl at the mention of the name Elizabeth Bennett …
The English curriculum has changed since I did the leaving
Fair? I think it is the easiest english paper 2 to come up in a while
Comparative questions were tough
In fairness it was a pretty easy paper – all the questions are so open ended – discuss a view etc…
Since when did viewing a film become acceptable by the way for Higher Level English – should we not be encouraging people to READ?? Surely someone who watches and compares two movies shouldn’t get the same marks as someone who actually reads and compares two books – a hell of a different accomplishment imho… And I’m not being stuck up or disillusioned or anything but just genuinely concerned given that a huge majority of people do the required reading for the LC and then NEVER read again…. :-(
Just sat the paper today, and to clarify – the comparative requires you to compare and contrast a film with a play and/or novel, so no one studies two films to compare. It’s probably the most difficult part of the course, as you’re comparing three different forms of media under very specific titles while correctly answering the question posed!!
@ Jen Fleming. First off, the comparative question limits students to studying one film, with the option of then studying two other texts: either novels or plays. Most schools choose one of each. While a film is a different medium to a book, its literary value is still undeniable. You wouldn’t ask them not to study a play (even though watching a play doesn’t require any reading either–in fact, most of Macbeth’s original audience was illiterate), so why get angry because they study Casablanca? Just because it’s on a screen doesn’t mean it has no cultural importance: considering the prevalence of movies in today’s society, the ability to interact with them critically is part of modern literacy.
Ellie get back to your study and good luck tomorrow :)
Ellie, ya seem to have English down to a T. Fair play to you. Best of luck in all the other exams and remember, there’s life after school!
Thanks Ellie and Sharon – was not angry or intentionally disparaging but genuinely curious and a little sad if they’d ‘dumbed down’ the curriculum in such a way. Clearly not the case though so thanks for setting me straight. I suppose I’m very out of touch with the LC of today and possibly a little jealous as we had little opportunity for engaging with different ‘texts’ in my time. King Lear is available on video but we were only allowed to watch it once we had rote learned the entire play twice over…!
9 years later I still love, and read Emily Dickinson’s poetry. The leaving cert actually left a lasting legacy there!
aarg
it all seems so much easier now.. if only i knew then what i know now
I remember studying for my Leaving Cert a long time ago and I knew either Shakespere or Yeats would come up. I studied all of Shakespere’s poetry, the lazy way. The basterd never came up. Only my english teacher gave us an essay on Yeat’s poetry about three weeks before the exam. Had to remember what I wrote in that essay. Got a C1
Dickinson wasn’t she the mad depressed one?
What the bloody hell is Irish doing on the top of an English Exam paper? No wonder they make jokes about the stupid Paddy’s.
This seems pretty easy really, especially if you’ve studied for it. I certainly couldn’t see it as “extremely difficult”.
I still have nightmares about exams.
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