Chapter 1: What is the focus of today's episode on the Leaving Cert Irish exam?
Now, the Leaving Cert is less than three weeks away and we are focusing on the exam subject by subject for Study Hub 2026. Today, I'm joined in studio by Shane DuPoir, who teaches Irish at the Dublin Academy of Education. Shane, good morning. Thanks for coming in. Thanks very much. So again, this is a subject with two papers, as people will be aware. So talk to me first about paper one.
What is it?
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.
Chapter 2: What are the differences between Paper One and Paper Two in the Irish exam?
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.
And what's the best way to prepare for the exam?
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. It hasn't appeared since 2023. But it's been on the paper every two to three years before that.
So what sort of question would they would they give you for that?
So maybe for this year, because there was a march in September for the Irish language, the rights of the language and also the rights of the people in the Gaelic, maybe on Irish in the Gaelic in 2026 or possibly a very popular one is Irish and the Irish culture nowadays as well.
OK, and people can get a bit anxious about the essay, can't they?
Yeah, of course they can. But like what I would say to students is like to try, like there are neutral phrases you can develop as well. Not everything has to be specifically about, you know, this essay all the time. You can have a generic opening, a general opening, a general closing that kind of addresses problems in society.
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Chapter 3: How should students prepare for Paper One of the Irish exam?
So paper two is four questions. First question is your reading comprehensions. they are worth 100 marks, which is basically 17%. It's 16.7%. Paper two is the prose section. You have to study five short stories, essentially one short film, and two of them will appear in the exam and you must answer on one of them. So you have a choice, which makes life a lot easier.
That's worth 30 marks, 5% of the overall grade. Poetry, 30 marks as well, 5% of the overall grade. And again, you'll have a choice. You study five poems, two appear in the exam, you answer on one. And the only question that is guaranteed on paper two for the study material is the extra literature question.
I focus on a tree that is the most popular one, but a Higg not Hitcher will be, you know, second place behind it. They're guaranteed to be on the exam. You have to get a question on those. There were 40 marks, about 6.5 percent of the exam.
But you don't know what the question is.
You know what the question is, but you do know it's going to be on it. You could spend all your time and energy on a poem or a story and it doesn't appear. At least with a tree or a Higg not Hitcher, you will definitely get a question on them.
Okay, and what's the advice for the reading comprehensions? Start with reading it, I guess.
Absolutely, start with reading. I would definitely start with them on Irish paper too. They're worth half the amount of marks on paper too. And the answers are in front of you. And I know that sounds a bit like a cliche, but you can steal the answers for questions.
1 to 6a from the comprehension you don't have to change anything it's a copy and paste exercise so write them down word for word as an examiner that's what I want to see I don't want you putting your own changes in you'll have loads of places to express your opinion but steal them from the comprehension and 6b you must answer kind of like a personal response let's call it about what's been read but you must write that in your own Irish so you're not taking that from the text exactly and that's where 12 marks and that will you know tell me if you're getting a 1, 2 or a 3 basically if you're doing well because
you've got to put your own language to the test there. Okay, and in terms of the pros, what's the advice for that? For pros, the big thing is to focus on character behaviour and character analysis. If you look at the past paper exams over the last 13 years or so, they're always basically character analysis questions.
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