Leaving Cert Diary 2025: Students are free from English exams
To paraphrase today's Leaving Cert Diary blogger, who was referencing The Shawshank Redemption, we say students are free at last from English exams!
The Leaving Cert Diary series, with thanks to our friends at the Irish Second-Level Students' Union (ISSU), will continue to share the thoughts of the young people sitting the state exams over the next two weeks.
Here, Sarah from Co Louth and Kayleigh from Co Westmeath tell us how English Paper 2 went for them.
We also have advice on how to eat well, get a good night's sleep and manage stress - click here!
Read Sarah's blog here...
As the English Paper 2 finishes, I am sure many students' hands are falling off. Like Andy Dufresne in The Shawshank Redemption, we are finally free from the prison, the prison of English exams!
The comparative had three modes this year which was guaranteed to any student sitting the exam. The theme or issue question I wrote was how a character's frame of mind aided the author's exploration of the complexity of a theme or issue. I thought this question allowed more interpretation than the cultural context question on consequences of not conforming to societal norms.
The Single text gave a wide variety of what I could talk about from injustices/ justice and betraying one's conscience on The Crucible. The unseen and prepared poetry section was handy for anyone who studied the female poets. I found I was torn between Eavan Boland and Tracy K Smith questions as they both were accessible to answer. Day two is done, but there are many more exams ahead of us. The next challenge? Algebra, calculus and Functions.
Read Kayleigh's blog here...
English Paper 2 seems to have gone over equally as well as Paper 1. Tracy K Smith made her debut on the paper with a question on "thought provoking questions about the nature of our lives". Boland made an appearance which I think the whole country was hoping for! Though Mahon is also another popular choice I think the question was unusual and would have certainly put me off going for it. The first King Lear question seems to have been disliked by a few students. Personally I found it nicer than the second question, though the content for both is very familiar.
There seems to be students unhappy with every single comparative question, I wasn't a fan myself of the cultural context question, especially as some leaving course media has more obvious encouragement of division than others.
The unseen poetry was nothing out of the ordinary either with both the two ten mark questions or the one twenty mark question being easy to approach. Overall I think depending on what students had prepared the paper could have gone either way but was still mostly what was predicted. I think we're all delighted to have one of the two paper subjects out of the way!
Founded in 2008, the ISSU is the national representative body for school students in the Republic of Ireland. The ISSU is led by students, for students.
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