{"id":482152,"date":"2026-06-04T05:35:14","date_gmt":"2026-06-04T05:35:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/482152\/"},"modified":"2026-06-04T05:35:14","modified_gmt":"2026-06-04T05:35:14","slug":"leaving-cert-english-paper-one-a-lovely-exam-teachers-say-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/482152\/","title":{"rendered":"Leaving Cert English paper one a \u2018lovely\u2019 exam, teachers say \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

English paper one<\/a> proved a perfect way to \u201clance the boil\u201d on this year\u2019s Leaving Certificate<\/a> exams, teachers have said in what they called a \u201clovely\u201d exam. <\/p>\n

Siobhan O\u2019Donovan, teacher at The Patrician Academy in Mallow, Co Cork<\/a>, said when her students came out of the exam \u201cyou could see the relief on their faces\u201d and they were \u201cvery happy with it\u201d.<\/p>\n

The paper began with a comprehension section, where students were given three different texts on the theme of influence. They had to answer questions on two of them.<\/p>\n

The first was an article published in the Financial Times Magazine in May 2024<\/a> about the spirit of Manchester by English author Jeanette Winterson. <\/p>\n

There was also an edited extract from British-Turkish writer Elif Shafak\u2019s 2024 novel There are Rivers in the Sky and the third piece was two edited extracts on the topics of poetry and art.<\/p>\n

\u201cThese gave the well practised student plenty of scope to demonstrate their ability to understand, analyse and evaluate a piece of writing and respond to it using effective language and expression skills,\u201d O\u2019Donovan said. <\/p>\n

The second section was a composition and accounts for 25 per cent of the overall English mark. <\/p>\n

Robert McDermott, an English teacher at St Andrews in Booterstown, Dublin<\/a>, said the essay options were \u201cterrific\u201d. <\/p>\n

\u201cThere were two short stories which were eminently accessible to those who had practised that. The two personal essays were both really lovely. The first one was on the influence of creative arts \u2013 that\u2019s a real gift to those kids who read, who are creative, who have written journals.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThe other personal essay was a moment that enriched lives in a variety of ways. That could be as simple as a kind word from somebody, or it could be a much more complicated experience.<\/p>\n

\u201cI thought it was great that the speech was for or against the motion that social media influencers are best ignored. And then there was a nice opinion piece on the value of music. Once again it was stuff that kids could access.<\/p>\n

\u201cA good paper for all levels and abilities. I suspect that this paper will be answered quite strongly across the board,\u201d McDermott said.<\/p>\n

The ordinary level paper \u201cheld no surprises,\u201d O\u2019Donovan said, and \u201callowed students to demonstrate their skills\u201d.<\/p>\n

The paper featured an extract from academic Dr Katriona O\u2019Sullivan\u2019s memoir Poor and an extract from the short story Fair Play by Belfast-based writer Jan Carson.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Q B\u2019s were appropriate with a dialogue, an email to the local council and a talk to incoming First Year students about moving from primary to secondary school.<\/p>\n

\u201cFinally theessay titles were clear and provided plenty of choice to candidates.<\/p>\n

\u201cAll in all it was deemed to be a manageable paper,\u201d O\u2019Donovan said.<\/p>\n

In the Junior Certificate paper, O\u2019Donovan said that while it was a \u201cbusy\u201d paper, \u201cstudents seemed happy to have been able to demonstrate their knowledge of literature, poetry, film and drama in a paper where no studied component was left out\u201d.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"English paper one proved a perfect way to \u201clance the boil\u201d on this year\u2019s Leaving Certificate exams, teachers…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":482153,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[43491,17163,46,615,207572,42,45841,3184,43,28205,40,38,41,39],"class_list":["post-482152","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-cao","tag-classroom-to-college","tag-cork","tag-dublin","tag-examwatch","tag-headlines","tag-junior-cert","tag-leaving-certificate","tag-news","tag-second-level","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/482152","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=482152"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/482152\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/482153"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=482152"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=482152"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=482152"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}