Shane De Poire

Yeah, so the two exams are actually really different, like what's on them and how they're marked.

So for Irish paper one, first question that they'll do is an overall exam.

That's about 20 to 23 minutes, I suppose.

It's worth 60 marks, 10% of the overall grade.

Everything has to be written in Irish.

Any right answers written in English, unfortunately, don't get rewarded.

So all Australia, you don't write any English in this exam.

Second part of the exam is the Ashta.

So you'd have about an hour and 50 minutes to write your Ashta, your, well, I should say it's the composition of Cappadocia.

The majority of students will choose to write an Ashta, an essay.

And you'll be given five essay titles, two short stories and two debates.

And you'll have to choose one of those topics.

So one kind of answer between two and four pages is typically what students would write.

So for Irish paper one, looking at current affairs would be really important.

Typically, when I speak to students or parents, the first thing they ask is, what do you think is going to come up in the exam?

I don't have a crystal ball, but the way I try to do it is I look at what's in the news and also look at past paper trends.

Like what I like to do is pick four or five topics every year and I go back and check if they would have worked against previous exam years.

So this year, for example, like I suppose the big social issue that we have would be the cost of living and the housing crisis.

So I'd be advising students to look at an essay on both of those, maybe combine them together because cost of living is kind of impacting the housing crisis.

Of course, the Irish language is an essay that hasn't appeared in a while and it does typically appear.