LEAVING CERT ENGLISH: HIGHER AND ORDINARY LEVEL PAPER 2:STUDENTS BREATHED a collective sigh of relief on opening the Leaving Cert English Paper 2 yesterday afternoon.
“The annual frenzy around which poets will be featured, played itself out with the minimum of fuss,” said Jim Lusby of the Institute of Education.
The second English paper is always the subject of intense speculation, about which poets will come up on the day.
This year the smart money was on Eavan Boland, Emily Dickinson and Robert Frost. The good news? All dutifully made an appearance.
Overall the response was overwhelmingly positive.
“Candidates streamed out of the exam hall, into the rain smiling,” Mr Lusby said.
A slight surprise was WB Yeats, who appeared for a second successive year – Wordsworth would have been a more predictable choice – but with three others to choose from students would not have been stuck.
Anne Gormley, an English teacher in Laurel Hill Coláiste in Limerick praised the questions on Frost and Boland as “very good”.
“They allowed the students to express themselves on both the level of theme and poetic techniques in each case,” she said.
“The question on Emily Dickinson was not surprising given the eccentric nature of her whole work and the students were very happy with the whole approach.”
“There is a trend towards making the questions quite specific now,” said Michael Doherty of the Association of Secondary Teachers Ireland, who teaches in Scoil Mhuire Buncrana. “The Boland question was quite a specific one about language which was good if you really knew your Boland poetry, but it would have been difficult if you didn’t.”
Section one, in which students are asked about a single text – Wuthering Heights, Ibsen's A Doll's House, A Whistle in the Darkby Tom Murphy, Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrathor Hamlet– drew praise from teachers.
“In each question, there was a subtle claim which the astute reader was invited to focus on,” said Mr Lusby.
He singled out the Hamletquestions as an example – "The suggestion that 'revenge' and 'justice' were finely balanced was thought-provoking, and the proposal that the murderer Claudius has some redeeming qualities was challenging," he said.
Elsewhere, the comparative section, normally the one which poses most problems for students, according to Ms Gormley, was “straightforward”.
Students were given a choice between answering questions on the theme or on the cultural context of at least two texts they had previously studied.
“Because there are almost 40 texts for students to select from, it can be particularly difficult to frame questions that are both fair and stimulating,” Mr Lusby said. “By and large, this paper succeeded.”
The question on theme “offered an opportunity to express different ideas from their three texts”, Ms Gormley said.
The language and approach used in the cultural context question was, “reasonable and manageable”, she added.
Those sitting the ordinary-level paper would have been equally happy, according to Mr Doherty. “The questions were good,” said Mr Doherty.
“They tested the students’ knowledge of the texts without being overly tricky.”
