The seeds of change in the new Junior Cycle programme, which is due to begin from next year, were planted in this year’s English examination, according to teachers.

About 60,000 Junior Certificate students took up their pens yesterday morning for the first of two English examinations. Three out of four students took English at higher level. Paper 1 started with a comprehension piece on novel-writing that was described as a “tough introduction” to the first State examination for Junior Cert students.

Alan Thompson of the TUI said it was a "paper of two halves".

"This paper presented quite a robust challenge for students. The first two questions were quite challenging while the functional writing and media sections would have been more familiar and comfortable," he said.

Prose essay
The first part of yesterday morning's exam was a comprehension section on an essay by writer Francine Prose, in which she explains the difficulty of writing a novel.

The first question in this section required students to describe why writing a novel required “bravery”. It was considered an exacting first question for the age group.

“The paper was disjointed, no connection between the two parts. Yesterday’s paper 1 gave nothing away.”

The main theme of yesterday's paper 1 was writing. Students were given a range of essay titles including "What books Mean to Me" and "History Repeating Itself". The higher level English paper 2 was generally seen as fair and lacked any particularly nasty surprises, but the format of some of the questions was different, said Christine Henehan, the ASTI subject representative for English.

Poetry question
Ms Henehan highlighted how the prepared poetry question, which required students to write a speech for a radio programme on why poetry was important, was closer to the format of a Leaving Cert English question; some students were surprised at this question. She said it may be a nod to the upcoming syllabus changes.

Mr Thompson said that English paper 2 has the same structure every year, so students are very comfortable with it. “The aim of the exam is to allow them to bring forward their knowledge, creativity, and critical capacity, and the exam succeeded here,” he said.

Paper 2 was comprised of questions on drama, poetry, and literature. Students were given an extract from Shakespeare's Much Ado About Nothing, and asked how they would make the scene humorous and entertaining if they were directing it.

Ms Henehan said the extract would be alien to many of today's children. She believed that many students would instead have opted to answer questions on an extract from the play Educating Rita.

The ordinary level paper was “much more candidate-friendly”, according to reports.