Leaving Cert: Spanish: The honours paper was fair, but insufficient writing space for comprehension questions caused a problem yet again.
On the front of the paper, as with many, students are told that they may use extra sheets of paper.
Unfortunately, students tend not to realise that they need extra paper until they've started writing the question.
Some markers may need magnifying glasses when reviewing these papers, said Maire Ní Chiarba, teacher at Coláiste An Phiarsaigh, Glanmire, Co Cork, ASTI subject convenor and chairperson of the education committee.
A positive aspect of the paper was that, unusually, the prescribed text used two extracts from the book rather than one. Questions 3 and 4 related to comparisons and differences in the two paragraphs - a refreshing approach.
But the take-up on the prescribed text in Glanmire, anyway, was not very big.
Most students were engrossed by the alternative question, which was about Elke Falk, a German who became a Russian spy after she fell in love with a spy, Ivan Terenev, who she met through a lonelyheart ad.
Some students were confused by a reading comprehension question about the Mayan people and their galaxy and its inhabitants.
The answer was that the Mayans believed that they were connected to the solar system by invisible umbilical cords.
The answer was in the unseen text, but the vocabulary words were so challenging that even some of the best students had difficulty.
Section B was included an integrated writing question about mobile phones, which initially pleased students. But there was a sting.
The text included a difficult word - desenvolverse, which means "unroll".
In the context, it meant to "grow up", but some people may not have got this, with the result that many avoided an otherwise tempting topic.
In a choice between writing dialogue, and writing an essay - comparing Irish and Spanish cultures, most picked the dialogue. It was an uneven choice with a drastic difference in ease between the two questions.
At ordinary level , where you would expect students to get more guidance rather than less, the students were not told what paragraph of texts related to questions. At higher level, this direction is given.
Not being told where to look for the answers, makes the ordinary paper more difficult than it needs to be, said Ms Ní Chiarba.
And question 3a even flummoxed some teachers, because the question referred to "tapa" while the answers referred to "tapas". "If it was singular in the text it should have been singular in the question," said Ms Ní Chiarba.