The Irish papers 1 and 2 for leaving certificate are challenging and often daunting to many students. This is why you need useful tips and tricks to help you successfully tackle the exam and get the grades you deserve. Implementing these tricks and strategies can give you an edge over other students and help you to pick up some extra marks.
Here are the top tips and tricks for leaving certificate Irish:
1. Take your time reading questions:
Many students are eager to get their answers down on paper during Irish exams. However, this can cause problems. Some students skim over questions and miss key details. This can make their answers wrong or missing pieces.
2. Practice listening and speaking skills:
The listening and speaking skills make up just under half the marks for your Irish exam. So spend a lot of time listening to Irish conversations online or through TG4. You should also speak Irish as much as possible with classmates, friends, and family.
3. Focus on tricky dialects:
Irish is spoken slightly differently throughout the country. This can make understanding certain accents difficult depending on where in the country you are familiar with. Identify the dialects you struggle with most, and listen to them as much as possible. This can help you to build confidence and gain marks on your listening exams.
4. Control the conversation in oral exams:
Most examiners for oral exams will want to see as much of your speaking abilities as possible to review your skills. As a result, many of them will allow you to control the flow and direction of your conversation. Take advantage of this to steer the conversation toward topics you are familiar with.
5. Plan before you write:
Sometimes when writing an answer for an Irish exam, you can focus so much on getting the spelling and grammar right that you lose track of your point. This will lose you marks, so plan your answers in your head or on paper before you start writing and stick to the plan throughout your response.
6. Familiarize yourself with the paper layouts:
One way to help you settle the nerves at the start of an exam is by familiarizing yourself with the paper layouts beforehand. You can do this by checking out past exam papers online to get a feel for how topics are asked.
7. Prepare for relevant writing topics:
You can expect themes and events pertinent to our world today to come up on the exam. For example, a writing question could be asked on anything from our dependence on technology to the refugee crisis caused by the war in Ukraine. So think about the vocab you'll need to know to write about such topics.
8. Plan for your prose and poetry questions:
The prose and poetry questions on paper 2 are sections that you can prepare yourself for well in advance, so make sure to study them. When you open the paper, read the questions and choose the sections that you're going to answer. Also, include quotes to relate your answer back to the original text.