The characteristically fine exam weather, often seen as a torment to Leaving and Junior Certificate students, was fortunately a reflection of the mood at Newpark Comprehensive in Blackrock, Co Dublin, yesterday where most students seemed pleased with the English papers.

"Paper I was a lovely paper, it really was very open, and no one I've spoken to seems to have had a problem with it. There was a particularly good question on whether cinema or books have a bigger impact, and the prose and the essay choices were all left very open," Sarah Vero, who sat higher level English said.

The second English paper in the afternoon was more challenging she said, but was still a fair paper. "It was very balanced over all but a bit trickier, as paper two normally is. The cultural context question was fairly tricky, but in the prescribed texts, there was nothing unexpected."

Oisín Vink was also pleased with the scope of Paper I. "I had my own story worked out before hand and it fitted in perfectly with the picture in the essay question. The comprehension was easy to interpret and the questions on film were quite open ended. It was not such a challenging paper as might have been expected and it was a good start to get into the swing of things."

Although most students found the content of the papers to be fair, the length of Paper I was, as ever, seen to be excessive, particularly at ordinary level.

"There wasn't enough time, I didn't get it finished. The questions themselves were grand, but I was writing a story and I didn't get time to finish it," John Hanney said.

He was happier with the second ordinary level paper, however. "It was a lot easier and I had time left over at the end to look over the questions. All the poets that were due to come up came up, it was a good paper."

Ali McDonnell also found the morning "very tiring", but was happy with the content of the questions.

"It was on the theme of change, changes in film, changes between London of the 1930s and the London of today, and the composition also had an option to write about change. It was pretty good."

The afternoon higher level exam also offered reasonable choice, she said.

"It was fine, Plath came up in the poetry, the Macbeth question was pretty straight forward . . . Kavanagh and Yeats, didn't come up, which was a bit of a surprise, because they were expected to, but overall it was fine."

Junior Cert students at Newpark were also happy with the English exams. "The honours language paper was okay, there weren't any real problems with it," Rachel Lambe said.

Rachael Sothern said the theme of the morning paper was unusual, but the questions were fair.