Sir, – Your report on the Junior Certificate German examination(“‘Very nice papers’ in accessible language”, June 14th) contains a comment from a teacher to the effect that the removal of the more difficult tenses from the paper helped “to make the learning experience nicer for the kids”.
However, one has to ask if a knowledge of those difficult tenses is important if a student is to become competent in the language? If so, should the tenses not then be taught and assessed?
Efforts to make the learning experience pleasant are commendable, but we must not do our students the disservice of failing to provide them with the elements necessary to acquire competence in a subject, even if those elements prove difficult. – Yours, etc,
MICHAEL O’DWYER,
Rail Park,
Maynooth,
Co Kildare.