Claire - Higher Level

After a week long break I was back in the exam hall today all ready to take on the Spanish exam. I both loved and loathed the fact that the Spanish exam was a week after the French one. The break was much needed as I was completely exhausted after my first week of exams.  It was great that I had the chance to recharge! On the other hand the week almost dragged on and with every passing day it was harder to fond the motivation to continue. It began to feel like the leaving cert was already over! I spent less days preparing for Spanish than I intended. It was really difficult deciding what to study for the exam, so I really just prioritised my verbs and learning some useful phrases!All the "buena suerte"s must have paid off because I am really happy with how the exam went today! However I am slightly biased as Spanish is by far my favourite subject but I feel that this was the nicest exam so far.The readings were a bit random but interesting. There was one about a whale in section A, and section B included a text about emigration -very relevant in the world today! The readings were of topics you had a basic understanding of in English and I thought this was fair. The synonym part I thought was fair and much more do-able than previous years!I did the opinion piece entitled "where one lives is not important". At first glance I thought wow I have not prepared any vocabulary on this but after a quick brainstorm it was a very user friendly topic. Finally!I did the dialogue and the note in the written section.  I found them much easier than I have found previous years and I thought the topics were engaging and almost fun to translate! One was about musical instruments and the other was about shopping. I was very happy because I was able to use phrases I learned for my oral work in my written section.The listening was okay.  Personally I feel I did not do as well in it as I have done so before.  It was a bit random! But maybe I just found it hard to concentrate because the end of the leaving is coming closer... Yay!I went into the exam worried that I would be caught for time but I'm pleased to report that was not a problem and I had a lot more time to think than anticipated.Overall, I'm hopeful that today went well.  I hope everybody else is pleased with how they got on today too!In off to study Technology now, but congrats to all those who are now finished their exams! Congratulations :D

ISSU Commentary

Justin Bieber again made an appearance on a State examinations paper, for the second time in two weeks. Feedback from the higher level paper was ‘extremely positive’. The letter section caused a lot of discontent; students had to write to a Spanish newspaper about the role of royalty in today’s world. One would imagine there were very few students expecting that. This topic certainly ‘threw’ some students, and many predicted that very few actually answered it. Otherwise the paper was described as ‘good’, the comprehensions even featured an article about a killer whale. The other comprehensions featured an article about emigration in Mexico, a 12 day traffic jam in China and the problem of people not paying in restaurants. The ordinary level paper was given a positive response by most, where the richest dog in the world, and elderly man who was reunited with his car after forgetting where he parked two years previously! The written expression, where students had to write an email was ‘fine’. Overall most candidates were relatively happy.

 Please note: blog posts reflect the opinion of the author and not necessarily the opinion of the Irish Second-Level Students’ Union. Blogs are updated daily by 6.30 pm on scheduled examination dates.