Catherine Foley found mixed views about yesterday's Junior Cert exam.
SOME annoyance and disappointment was expressed by teachers yesterday with questions on the Junior Cert ordinary-level French exam. A "degree of visual agility and verbal reasoning" rather than a knowledge of French was required by the students who sat the paper, according to Ms Ann Weafer, a French teacher at St Thomas Community College in Bray, Co Wicklow, and a TUI subject representative. She said certain questions did "not really test their French."
Ms Margaret Le Lu, a French teacher at Old Bawn Community School in Tallaght, Dublin, and an ASTI subject representative, said that she was "disappointed" with the ordinary-level paper.
Ms Weafer singled out questions six and seven in section 11 in particular as being difficult. It was "a little unfortunate that in one section, the key piece of information is printed over with a line going through it".
On a positive note, she said that there was a vast improvement in the layout and the clarity of the paper. There were a lot of problems in the past but the paper, the questions and the printing "has improved enormously and is worthy of mention," she said. "The phrasing of the questions has improved also."
Ms Le Lu said it was a pity that the information needed to answer section 2, question 3. was contained in a badly-reproduced ad. "It's fairly dark in colour and difficult to read," she said.
With regard to the higher-level paper, Ms Weafer said that it was "pretty predictable. Although the paper was hard and testing, this has been the pattern in the past. I would assume that they would have been preparing for that."
She felt that the paper was difficult because students had "quite a lot of dense text to go through but after that it is quite straight-forward". Ms Le Lu said she found no fault with it.
The same tape was used in both the higher and ordinary-level exams. Ms Weafer said the tape was "quite clear and audible and straightforward enough. I don't think the listening should have presented any great problems." Ms Le Lu was also happy with the tapes.
Mr Sean Higgins, a French teacher in St Mary's Diocesean School in Drogheda, Co Louth, and past president of the ASTI, found the higher-level paper "much friendlier to the student than in previous years." However, he singled out section 3 part (a) which asks students to write a letter in French to a penfriend, as "putting the standard up to Leaving Cert level again."