On Thursday, 8 June our Leaving Cert students said farewell to English with Paper 2 in the bag. In the morning the Engineering exam took place, but for today's Diary we are looking back on English.
There was a lot of writing involved, so massive thanks to our contributors Lauretta (in the video up top) and Shannon and Aoibhín below.
For lots of tips, advice and more on RTÉ Learn click here!
With thanks to our friends at the Irish Second-Level Students' Union we have another year of our Leaving Cert Diary blogs. It's the place where young people tell us what they thought in their own words.
Shannon tells is about English Paper 2
Does anyone else feel like their hand is about to fall off? I certainly do, though hopefully I'll regain feeling for Maths tomorrow.
Overall I think the general consensus about English 2 was that it was quite a nice paper. I've heard a few mumblings about Bishop not coming up, so my condolences to those who wanted to write about a fish for a while, but personally I was hoping that against the odds Rich would come up, so you can imagine my delight.
I thought the unseen poem was nice, if a bit uncomfortably relatable. I chose the first Macbeth question – about complexities of character, and thankfully it went well enough.
My only worry is about length, especially in the comparative – those exam booklets truly are the bane of my existence. Hopefully quality over quantity will prevail.
Despite accidently being over-confident with the comparative in my studies, I think I managed the General Vision and Viewpoint question relatively well, and I appreciated the ambiguity of the 70 mark question on characters in crisis.
Overall I’ve come out of it with a sense of relief and delight that English is finally over – numbness in limbs notwithstanding. Hopefully it went as well for everyone else, and good luck for tomorrow!
Aoibhín thinks English was a mixed bag...
Paper 2, paper 2 what will we do?
Overall Paper 2 was a mixed bag, not the worst but certainly not the best either.
I chose to do the Macbeth character question on Macbeth's character. It was a struggle with his "unstable character" not being the only thing unstable after...
The comparative theme or issue question was as bloody as the 'Scottish Play' with many of us left pondering what actually were the moral questions in the relationships in Casablanca and A Doll's House... or was that just me?
However, all was not yet lost with the unseen poem that simply was divine.
The theme of mother daughter relationships continued on with Paula Meehan's appearance on the studied poetry section, much to the relief of most of the country.
Ultimately the paper was as subjective as the subject itself, with a collective sigh of relief as well as the universal complaint of 'I can't feel my hand...' after. So, farewell Leaving Cert English as Shakespeare would say there's much ado about nothing...
We will be back again tomorrow with another Leaving Cert Diary and don't forget you can CLICK HERE for more great resources!
