Chapter 1: What subjects are covered in the Study Hub for Leaving Cert 2026?
The clue is in the weather. The glorious sunshine can mean only one thing. The leave insert is just round the corner. But don't worry, Study Hub 2026 is here to help. And today, French and Spanish take centre stage. Here with me in studio is French teacher James Dempsey. On the line from Donegal is Spanish teacher Imelda Collum. You're both very welcome.
James, you teach French, German and Spanish at Merrifield College in Drumcondra, part of the Le Calais school. Schools Trust celebrating 80 years of education. Not with you, obviously, but congratulations. French paper is on Wednesday the 10th of June, so there's a bit of time left. What should students be doing in those last days and perhaps the night before the exam?
So the night before, I'd be making sure I don't start panicking, right? You have to remember you've already done, if you're doing higher level, 25% of the paper because that's what the oral accounts for, 20% for ordinary level. And the night before, I'd be really focusing on a couple of things. I'd be making sure that I am learning off some set phrases, but rich set phrases.
Bear in mind that every student in the country knows how to say, So I'd be finding other ways, synonymous ways, richer ways of saying those. And then I would be reading every question on the reading comprehensions to remind myself how to do them. Because obviously the reading comprehensions are the be all and end all of the French paper they are. each question is worth 1.25% of your entire grade.
So you don't want to get, you don't want to miss those ones. So make sure you know exactly what the question is actually asking in order to be able to answer it. Okay. And on the morning of the exam? On the morning of my exam, the first day we went to mass. It didn't do me any, it didn't do me any, you know, it didn't do me any problems. But yeah, on the morning of the exam, I would be
Going back over the kind of grammar kind of questions that can appear in the reading comprehension. So you can be asked to find examples of tenses. So know what the tenses are. By that I mean, is it a simple tense? That means a one word tense.
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Chapter 2: What should students focus on the night before their French exam?
Is it a compound tense? That means I'm looking for more than one word. I'd be looking at the different kinds of pronouns and their different roles. So there's subject, direct object, indirect object, adverbial. They all perform a different role in a sentence. But what they maintain is they refer back to something that had to be mentioned beforehand and they keep their number and gender.
So they have to refer to something plural and or masculine and or feminine and or singular, if you get me. So, yeah, I'd be doing my detective work that way.
OK, so you've done your detective work. You're in the exam hall. You turn over the paper. What are you looking at?
The first thing you're looking at is a journalistic reading comprehension. So there are two reading comprehensions. They're each worth 60 marks. The first one is a piece of journalism. Why does that matter? Because it'll be written in probably the present tense or the passƩ composƩ and the imparfait, maybe. But you're looking at maybe future tenses, conditionals as well.
The second text is a piece of literature. That's kind of more important because it'll definitely be written in the imparfait. And it's possible that it'll be written in a tense called the passƩ simple. which is a unique tense to literary French. Now, don't freak out if you've never, if your teachers ever mentioned that. Don't worry about it at all.
One thing to be mindful of is the verb ĆŖtre there. It can be a little bit confusing. It can look, well, it looks like the word F-U-T. You might look at it and think F-U. But basically, just be mindful that F-U-T is was in that tense. Other than that, you'll be absolutely fine. Then when it comes to reading comprehension, you want to build context, right? Context is everything.
So I would actually start reading the questions before I start reading the text and I would work backwards through the questions. So start with the last one because that's the only one in English. And it usually is asking you to give some sort of details about the characters, the people you're about to encounter in the text.
So you can build a bit more context on who exactly it is you're going to encounter. then work my way back through the questions, back to question one, and then start reading the text. The text is broken up into sections, so go section by section and take your time.
Okay. So how many questions are we answering?
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Chapter 3: What are the key components of the French written exam?
It's very important not to waste time going even reading it unless you've done the novel. And you go on to question 1B, which is the journalistic text. And that is 70 marks. And then section B is another reading comprehension and an opinion piece, the dreaded opinion piece. So that's 100 marks. So again, the reading comprehension is 50 and the opinion piece itself is 50 marks.
So again, in that section B, you have synonym questions, which the students tend to dislike. You know, they don't like that question. And then you have a bit of translation and another synonym question and then a bit of general comprehension, you know. And then you move on to the dreaded opinion piece, which most students really, really dread year in, year out.
And they're always wondering what's going to come up and will they write enough? And they're afraid of it, you know. But I would say not to be afraid of it because it's not too long. You know, it's 80 to 150 words. And it's your time to show off what you've learned over the last five or six years in Spanish on a topic, you know. And it's loosely based on the reading comprehension. OK.
Very important.
And in terms of tips for our students, do you have any tips for them?
Well, what I would say to my kids, I would say, you know, when you get the paper, the first thing, I wouldn't even read the questions. You know, I'd go to the back page, get rough work, whatever, jot down.
important grammar points you know your verb tense endings for present your past your future you know the common or regular verbs any other grammar point that might have caused you difficulty in school just get them down on paper have them in front of you forget about it because people will go and do their comprehensions first so I would always advise to do that so then when they come to their written section they're not thinking on the spot they have things written down in front of them and they just have to flip over and say I need a past tense or a present tense
And they have it in front of them so they're not thinking as they're writing because they're under pressure. They're getting tired, you know. Yeah. So it's very important, I think, personally. Unlike the French teacher, I would be a person who would advocate highlighting, you know. I would be underlining their buzzwords, your keywords in the text, you know.
and finding them in the text and have the comprehension in front of you, you know, I think it's useful for my kids, yeah.
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