Highest Possible Grade in Irish?

ryanairzer

I am not from the Gaeltacht and don't attend an Irish school. I got a B in the Junior Cert and since then have done feck all work in Irish.

Lately I've been becoming more and more attracted to studying Medicine in university, but the points for it start at like 570.

Now I think I can get an A1 in 5 of my subjects so long as I work but the problem comes with English and Irish.

I would want to be in the B range in one of these subjects to be safe but I can't decide which one I should be trying to improve in.

I hate English but should get a C comfortably with minimal effort. I figure I could be a high B student if I was arsed but I can't bring myself to make an effort. Lately I'm liking Irish a lot more and I'm just wondering is it in anyway possible for me to get a B2/B1 in it at honours? And how could I achieve this grade? I'm willing to work majorly hard.

pbarry

It is highly possible to achieve a B1/B2 in Irish, especially if you are willing to work hard. I think the fact that you are confident of getting 5 A1's already means that you don't need much study advise. What you need to do is apply yourself to Irish as you have done to your other 5 "stronger" subjects.

Although you state that you don't care much for English, I would recommend applying yourself 100% to both English and Irish at least up to your Christmas exams. Re-assess the situation after you get your results and that will help you determine both your strengths and weaknesses in each subject, allowing you to make a more informed decision on which subject to apply yourself to.

Hope this helps,

Patrick.

PurpleFistMixer

Obviously an A1 is the highest possible one, but you'd basically need to be fluent to get that. I'm sure it's possible to get it without going to a gaelscoil/being from the gaeltacht, but it'd (I'd say) involve attaining fluency, or at least moderate fluency.

I've not finished the LC so I can't say with any degree of accuracy what may help or not, but I think, basically...
Work on vocabulary, any time you see a word you don't understand, write it down, look it up, try learn it.
Learn all the grammar you can for the essay question. Tenses, genitive case, other things like that...
For paper two, make sure you know the Stair because it's basically guaranteed points if you do, and just learn your poems/stories/novel really well. Paper two is mostly learning, I believe they don't dock an awful lot of marks for the quality of your Irish, so you could do well enough in that without ridiculous Irish skillz. And, as they give the poems on the paper, all you have to do is make sure you've understood what they mean. The rest of it is just using skills you'd have learned in English to analyse the poem.
As for the Oral/Aural, listen to RnaG, watch TG4, speak Irish, etcetera. No other way about this really. Well you can try tricks like learn vocabulary relating to topics that come up frequently on the Aural, that sort of thing. And if you (like most people who aren't from Ulster I'd say), find the Donegal accent incomprehensible, don't be afraid of it, try get used to it so you can understand it. When I went to the Gaeltacht this year there were two girls from Donegal in my house so now I can more or less understand the dialect, it's great. : )

spurious

I don't mean to offend you, but this
I figure I could be a high B student if I was arsed but I can't bring myself to make an effort.
might not bode too well for a career in Medicine, or in anything else really.

Any other areas you might not be arsed to make an effort in?

Re the Irish, A1 is the highest grade obtainable. It is a fallacy to believe those from Gaeltacht areas have a great advantage over non-native speakers. Native speakers of all languages can be a bit sloppy where grammar is concerned and this is no different in Irish. Many people who are not native speakers achieve high grades in Irish.

ryanairzer

spurious wrote:

I don't mean to offend you, but this
I figure I could be a high B student if I was arsed but I can't bring myself to make an effort.
might not bode too well for a career in Medicine, or in anything else really.

Any other areas you might not be arsed to make an effort in?

I just don't like studying literature I don't like. (ie. all of our course)

I mean I hate geography, but geography is supposed to be boring and pointless. Whereas I'm supposed to enjoy books and films, and it seems silly analysing ones I don't like when there are tons of ones I do like out there.

JC 2K3

PurpleFistMixer wrote:

I believe they don't dock an awful lot of marks for the quality of your Irish

10%, and that's just for grammar alone. If the corrector can't understand what you're trying to say then you'll lose further marks, and you'll need good grammar + quality of Irish for paper one anyway, so it's not really something you can get away without learning well.

I STRONGLY recommend using http://nualeargais.ie/gnag/gram.htm to learn grammar rules. My teacher was considered an exceptionally good grammar teacher and is known for covering more aspects of grammar in more detail than other teachers, but I found the explanations of grammar rules on that site much more comprehensive and well explained than he ever taught us.(probably because it was originally written in German and therefore obviously aimed at linguists interesting in studying celtic languages in precise detail rahter than the vague teachings of many Irish teachers).

For vocab GET A DECENT DICTIONARY. No, that pocket Collins one or the "Foclóir" you had in 6th class isn't any good. They're rubbish in fact. Get a big De Bhaldraithe one. I had 2 seperate massive ones for English-Irish and Gaeilge-Béarla. There was never a word I could not find in either. Look up words as much as possible.

Also OP, post in Teach na nGealt and maybe try and join some sort of conversation group to improve your vocab.

Selphie

PurpleFistMixer wrote:

Obviously an A1 is the highest possible one, but you'd basically need to be fluent to get that. I'm sure it's possible to get it without going to a gaelscoil/being from the gaeltacht, but it'd (I'd say) involve attaining fluency, or at least moderate fluency.

I got an A1 in Irish this year, and was absolutely nowhere near attaining fluency. Never went to a Gaelteacht, yada yada yada. However, if I got one, then an A1 is entirely probable. I needed a good few points for my course, and was always pretty good at languages, so I asked my teacher for special help.
That involved basically just writing reams upon reams of stuff. Lots of essays. I did the usual ones; poverty, death on the roads, all that sort of topical stuff. And wrote out loads of sample answers for the poems and stories. The Irish exam papers are great, because the same things come up year after year, and usually the same questions. Also I had the Folens exam papers (i think it was them anyway, they're white and green) and they had sample answers at the beginning which were more than helpful.
Keep speaking Irish away to yourself (it actually works) your teacher and your friends. Get a list of the most common questions they ask in the oral and practise until you're saying them in your sleep. And you'll have no trouble.
Believe me, if I got an A1, anyone can. Work at it, and you'll get a high grade.

cson

You'd really want to be sure medicine is the course for you. I thought it was for me but then I went and did a placement in a hospital during 5th year for LCVP and that changed my mind a lot. It ain't glamorous, it ain't like ER and it most certainly ain't easy, its a profession that you will have to bother your arse about most certainly.

qwertyface

I got a C in my junior cert irish and for 4th, 5th and most of 6th year i just made no effort because I figured it was a waste of time. Then 6th year christmas I did a one week revision course and realsed it wasn't so bad. I made a notebook with notes on each poem and story and just read these over and over until they were implanted in my head! I ended up with a B1.. I might have gotten an A if I'd known one more stair na gaeilge (out of the 13 i learnt only one came up :mad: ) and if both the poem and story that id done the least work on (because they were compulsory questions the year before) hadn't come up as compulsory again!!!

As for English (also C in junior cert), I was getting Ds in 4th year, and mostly Cs during 5th and 6th year. My best friend got As and Bs in every essay and question. In the mocks I got a C2 and he got a B2. Then I did basically the same as Irish..learnt off stuff that could be manipulated. I ended up with an A1 and my friend "only" got an A2 (which is also excellent..but you know what I mean!)

anyway, this long boring story was to show, that you can surprise yourself if you just work at the subjects you think you hate! and if you use the same notes (maybe just gradually add on more as you know more) you'll remember loads because the words will stick in your head like song lyrics or something...