Leaving Cert English - Ordinary level: Ordinary level Leaving Certificate students sitting yesterday's English papers were asked to answer questions on a wide variety of themes, ranging from the nature of freedom to the importance of the mobile phone.

These were accompanied by more traditional questions based on texts from authors such as Emily Bronte, William Shakespeare and Seán O'Casey.

Paper 1, involving comprehension and composition, was described as "accessible" by PJ Sheehy, a teacher at Arklow CBS and the ASTI subject representative for English.

However, he said one question asking students to compose an advertisement to promote a holiday was "quite heavily loaded with risk.".

This was because it was difficult to know what exactly was being demanded from students looking to obtain a high percentage of the 50 marks available.

But overall, students were quite pleased with paper one, he said. "Most didn't seem to have a problem and found something in it that they liked. So it was quite doable."

Paper 2, which included questions on prescribed and unseen poems, also had a good choice available to students, and was well laid out, Mr Sheehy said.

Michael Byrnes, principal of Kildare Vocational School and the TUI subject representative in English, thought the second text in paper one, focusing on the denial of freedom, provided a good contrast for students. This was because the preceding text featured five young people stating what freedom means to them.

"It was all current, it was all relevant to them," he said. "The third text, featuring images of freedom, gave students a considerable opportunity to be creative."

Paper 2 at ordinary level was also very fair, Mr Byrnes added. "It was very much an accessible, doable paper," he said. "Overall, I'm happy with the papers. I talked to a couple of the students in our own school and they were quite pleased."