Orals

lilmissprincess

I had a mock mock oral with my teacher this morning.

Apparently my Irish is fantastic but I need to learn the basic grammar you learn in Primary school....

As for french...my teacher is convinced that learning in blocks is the way forward and seems oblivious to my inability to do so....GRRR

bythewoods

-JammyDodger- wrote: »

Thanks for the tips PFM and bythewoods. I badly need all the tips I can get!

No problem.

Although, I really should have said something about THIS:


Rescue Remedy.
The stuff's amazing.

I'm generally not a nervous person but before the orals last year I was pretty shaky/ FREAKED OUT, as were most people. A few squirts of this and I was grand though.
Probably smelled a bit herb-y/ alcohol-y going into my orals, but it was better than shaking and grinning.

I know you can get it in health food shops. Possibly in pharmacies too.

SarcasticFairy

So, found ou last night the mock oral was definitely on Friday. So, I did nothing, at all.

Sitting eating lunch with my friends today, and with about 10 minutes left to go, my year head (who's one of the irish teachers) came over to us and told us her class had finished early and we were to go in after lunch. Cue frantic looking for oral copies and mild panic attacks. We went to our teacher to moan a bit and get ourselves out of doing it. One of the girls cried, and we were let off til tomorrow. She was actually crying, but still, crying always works!

Couple of the lads were coerrced into going in today. In the middle of talking about the recession, one of them was asked what sort of flowers he had in his garden. I mean what?! I leant my sliochts to one of them, cos he'd lost his, and he forgot to give them back. I now have none to practice.... Anyone know where you'd find them?

Tomorrow should be interesting :rolleyes:

celtic723

examinations.ie/schools/2006L...

lorna100

irish and french Im screwed for, spanish im fairly ok - my french grammer is all over the place, ive been avoiding thinking of the orals completly.. irish im just about scraping through honours and dont want to drop. Gonna try to use midterm to work on the orals.

It sounds really weird but for things like the sliochts and french documents, spanish roleplays etc, record yourself saying it on your phone and while on the bus/train play it over and over again, really helps to get it in on the ear and you can see where you go wrong most.

Make up a list of questions that you're likely to be asked in the oral and record yourself answering them, then play it back and see where your strengths/weaknesses are. Our french teacher provides a tape recorder for people to do this at lunch, lol! Also if you put yourself under pressure (like if you have to leave for work etc. at a certain time and cannot be late, be ready 15 mins early and don't leave til you have answered all your q's, then reflect on it to see where you went wrong.

I know if I do this often enough my grammer will improve in french, like say leaving out the helping verb when congujating the passe compose, or for agreements etc. The more you practice the easier it wil be!

SarcasticFairy

celtic723 wrote: »

examinations.ie/schools/2006L...

Thanks!

lorna100 wrote: »

It sounds really weird but for things like the sliochts and french documents, spanish roleplays etc, record yourself saying it on your phone and while on the bus/train play it over and over again, really helps to get it in on the ear and you can see where you go wrong most.

I recorded myself reading my sliochts and listened to them before I went in! It actually work, I got 30/30 for my reading!

I didn't record the rest, and it didn't go well at all. I struggled on simple questions and couldn't get my tenses together to save my life. But it was good experience and I know what to look at now for the real thing!

cautioner

Is anyone else using "An dTuigeann Tú?". I haven't had a proper read of it yet but some of the sample oral dialogues are thoroughly ridiculous.

"An raibh tú san ospidéal riamh?"
"Bhuel, fan go bhfeicfidh mé, bhí mé san ospidéal anuraidh. I ndáríre, bhí mé! Bhris mé mo chos, níl mé ag magadh!"

I wonder if the examiner would be exasperated, amused, or simply confused...

bythewoods

cautioner wrote: »

Is anyone else using "An dTuigeann Tú?". I haven't had a proper read of it yet but some of the sample oral dialogues are thoroughly ridiculous.

"An raibh tú san ospidéal riamh?"
"Bhuel, fan go bhfeicfidh mé, bhí mé san ospidéal anuraidh. I ndáríre, bhí mé! Bhris mé mo chos, níl mé ag magadh!"

I wonder if the examiner would be exasperated, amused, or simply confused...

Haha, I know! They're actually hilarious! It's all just fillers, you're saying nothing of any worth!
Although they've one or two nice phrases. Litterally, one. Two tops.

cautioner

I think the best one I saw was:

"a thiarcas!" - - - - - - "Oh jeepers!

How quaint!

Piste

My entire Irish essay for paper 1 next week will be full of fillers. I'm going to do the diaspóireacht as it'll be a half page of intro, another paragraph or waffle about the many problems that face the country, but none as important as X, a page or so making some sort of argument and then the rest insulting the other team and ending it with a load of clichés.

Honestly if people spoke/wrote in English the way LC students do in Irish people would get so pissed off constantly hearing things like "in my opinion, the situation is getting worse lately, this is only the tip of the iceberg to tell the truth..."

celtic723

how much marks can you obtain from the Sliochts if you make no mistakes?

Fad

Piste wrote: »

Honestly if people spoke/wrote in English the way LC students do in Irish people would get so pissed off constantly hearing things like "in my opinion, the situation is getting worse lately, this is only the tip of the iceberg to tell the truth..."

God be with you, I havent a dog's respect for the government, If I won the lottery, with the help of God, I would buy a small island.......A1 sentence me thinks:D

Of course you'd have to directly translate everything from Irish, so the syntax would be a little "Different"

celtic723 wrote: »

how much marks can you obtain from the Sliochts if you make no mistakes?

30 I think.

celtic723

Fad wrote: »

God be with you, I havent a dog's respect for the


30 I think.

thanks that means its a huge chunk of your total oral percentage.. excellent

SarcasticFairy

Fad wrote: »

God be with you, I havent a dog's respect for the government, If I won the lottery, with the help of God, I would buy a small island.......A1 sentence me thinks:D

Of course you'd have to directly translate everything from Irish, so the syntax would be a little "Different"


30 I think.

I said something along the lines of "Who is responsable for this situation? In the name of God where does the blame lie?!" in my mock. I would never say anything like that in English, but it looks good in the middle of it all! Everything I write or say is a gross exaggeration of what it needs to be, just because that's the way we're taught!

celtic723 wrote: »

thanks that means its a huge chunk of your total oral percentage.. excellent

Well it's 30 out of 150, so it's like, what 20%? Still though, much easier marks than stumbling through a sentence straight out of your head!

bythewoods

celtic723 wrote: »

thanks that means its a huge chunk of your total oral percentage.. excellent

It's 5% over all, for the whole subject like. 30/600.
That's a huge amount for just reading a passage which you're allowed have the phonetics written in for.

Aisling(",)

my friend and i are now texting in irish till after the orals.we keep ending up with crossed wires though

bythewoods

Aisling(",) wrote: »

my friend and i are now texting in irish till after the orals.we keep ending up with crossed wires though

Nice! I did that last year, really quite helpful, if a little uncool.

2 of my friends study french in college, something I plan on making use of. It's lovely and handy to text in french.. you can just turn the predictive text to french et voila!

cautioner

Wish I had the fundage for a Tocco... I have a couple of Gaeilge buddies but it's a pain in the arse texting them.

Fad

cautioner wrote: »

Wish I had the fundage for a Tocco... I have a couple of Gaeilge buddies but it's a pain in the arse texting them.

Hardly need predictive text to do it (I managed a few years ago, but it took hours to have a conversation).

You can download it though here, well not there, but there are instructions, and its on some samsungs, my sister has that touch screen one with all the Irish stuff already on it., Tá mé an gealasach (My phone is too old, and it wont support the download)

cautioner

Non-predictive text kills me. Especially as I'm prone to sending quite long messages.

Thanks for the link! It says it should work ok on my phone. Nice one.

Fad

cautioner wrote: »

Non-predictive text kills me. Especially as I'm prone to sending quite long messages.

Thanks for the link! It says it should work ok on my phone. Nice one.

My aversion to txt spk means often I cant fit what I want to say into a message, which can, to say the least, be fustrating. However, I combat this fustration by making phonecalls instead:)

Glad to spread the love:pac:

cautioner

I honestly have serious difficuty reading txt spk these days. It's just getting worse and worse. Grumble. Moan. This new money is awful fiddly. [/old]

fabgooner

hey is anyone having problems of thinking the wrong language, like when i'm asked a question in irish, i think of french words and vice versa

PurpleFistMixer

fabgooner wrote: »

hey is anyone having problems of thinking the wrong language, like when i'm asked a question in irish, i think of french words and vice versa

I think everyone gets that. During my French Oral she asked me about the Gaeltacht... a single word of Irish and I was instantly thinking in Irish.

Fad

PurpleFistMixer wrote: »

I think everyone gets that. During my French Oral she asked me about the Gaeltacht... a single word of Irish and I was instantly thinking in Irish.

Only happens in the French Oral to me, but the Irish comes out in a French accent, so hideous that is sent a French woman into hysterics:o

SarcasticFairy

fabgooner wrote: »

hey is anyone having problems of thinking the wrong language, like when i'm asked a question in irish, i think of french words and vice versa

During my mock irish oral I managed to get Irish, French, English AND Spanish words in. Seriously. I only studied spanish for about 4 weeks before I went on a school trip to Barcelona, so it's not like I even have heaps of Spanish :rolleyes: The examiner didn't say anything, or even seem to notice though...

It happens all the time when I'm trying to write in either language though. You get stuck on one word and you can always think of the word in the opposite language. Sometimes I just write it down anyway and continue with my sentence, it's nearly easier than one word wrecking your head.

fabgooner

haha did you get bonus marks for adding in all these different languages

SarcasticFairy

Probably not :P I was just so ridiculously nervous that all kinds of nonsense spewed out of my mouth!

fabgooner

haha ah god. i've got my orals end of march, start of april. so not looking forward to them

SarcasticFairy

You'll be fine. All that stuff about the examiner being there to help you and not there to interrogate you is true (based on my mock oral, and what other students have said). Our examiner sort of tried to hint some of the words at us as well, by mouthing them so that the tape wouldn't pick up on it and she could give us the marks They really do only seem to push you if they think you're able for it! Just practice loads, I didn't practice the questions out loud, I just read over them, and that's where I reckon I fell down!

It wasn't as terrible as I thought it was going to be anyway!