Jc -> Lc ?

CrimE

I am just wondering about what everyone thinks about the relevence of the junior cert. results and coursework etc. to the leaving cert.

I know for me that harldy a day goes by when a teacher says to us; "You learned that at junior cert and we just have to learn more based on it", which leads me to believe the jc isnt as pointless as made out.

Also I know people say your junior cert results have no bearing on your eventual leaving cert results but I think if you get something like over 8 or 9 As its pretty certain you will do well in the lc.
So basically the question im asking is what do you think about the junior cert. in relation to the leaving?

:v:

Funkstard

I think it's great experience to have going into the LC, knowing about revising effectively, organising yourself and time management etc. But the actual results have had little or no bearing on me now or what classes I'm in.

We were constantly told that our results would decide whether we do honours or pass in the LC, but that turned out to be absolute bullshít. I'm in the top honours English class, and there are alot of people who shouldn't be there, and likewise some of the best English students in the year aren't in the class.

Also, we pretty much haven't talked about the JC once in our senior cycle

ozt9vdujny3srf

It depends on the subject.

Languages for instance, your vocabulary built up for Junior Cert will still be useful for Leacing Cert.

Some of the things you learnt in maths like factorising and simultaneous equations will also be of use for leaving cert maths.


In other cases, subjects like science for juniour cert isnt very helpful for any of the leaving cert science subjects. Then again if you continue on with science in third level you'll find that it was all a big lie and secondary school sciences (apart from possibly biology which i didnt touch for LC / college) bear practically no resemblence to what you study in University.

Maths is a strange example, given that the honours part of the Junior Cert Course was at least around my time roughly equivalent to the pass part of the Leaving Cert Course (give or take probability, simpson's rule, etc.)

I found that Science is too broad for the Junior Cert tbh, I'd have liked to have dropped biology early on.

Scarinae

With languages especially I think doing well in the junior cert is important, because you really have to build up stuff like vocabulary and being comfortable with verbs. A girl in my year did French for the junior cert and picked up Spanish as well in fifth year and though she was amazing at languages she did find it a nuisance coming up to the orals especially because she didn't have a LOT of the basic vocabulary.
As for Maths, I'm not sure because the JC curriculum has changed since I did it but I got an A in the JC and then didn't listen at all in 4th year because I had friends in the class, and I found it real hard when I got into 5th because the teachers had done basic differentiation, probability etc with us and just skipped that stuff to save time. I had to work harder to catch up and ended up getting an alright grade in the Leaving Cert, certainly not my best. Moral of that story? Do listen in TY! (I know that's not the junior cert, but it's a similar thing)
For English, I think it was great that we had already studied a play and so we were familiar enough with that format, same goes for poetry. I'm glad functional writing wasn't on the LC because it was SO BORING. I'm not sure about subjects like History and Geography because I didn't do them for the LC, but Science wasn't particularly relevant to the Science subjects in the LC, well not Biology or Chemistry anyway. Anything we needed to do that was on the junior cert they went over anyway because some people wouldn't have known things. This is an incredibly waffly post and I apologise, I tend to waffle when I'm tired, but what I'm basically doing is repeating what other people have said in an unnecessarily verbose fashion. JC students should work on languages and Maths I guess, but it's not the end of the world if they do badly in Science or CSPE

tribulus

Alan Tender Merry-go-round wrote:

In other cases, subjects like science for juniour cert isnt very helpful for any of the leaving cert science subjects. Then again if you continue on with science in third level you'll find that it was all a big lie and secondary school sciences (apart from possibly biology which i didnt touch for LC / college) bear practically no resemblence to what you study in University.

so true!!! damn them!!!

Le Rack

I dunno, we were told by certain teachers that what you get in JC english for example is what you can get in LC if you keep up the work like you did for JC, maths you need to be WELL able for HL in JC to be able for it in LC, I got a C or a B in HL in JC and did HL for fifth year but dropped back this year cuz it was the greatest strees fest, I just couldn't handle it. I haven't noticed it many other subjects, the new geography course is only an in depth version of the JC, it's great! Art has the whole history side, Irish is fairly simialr, Chem is evil! even though I got a B or an A in JC, I'm finding the chem killer now, German is fine... I dunno, we were told that our JC results were an estimation of our LC results provided we kept up the work and a bit more...

d4gurl

Just today we started coordinate geometry in Maths and the teacher was like sure you all know this from Jc! We were all wtf! In chemistry also we are expected to know the basics! I think for most subjects the JC is important! IT gives u ur frist taste of the real exams!